Compared to Aleks, to what degree is EPGY individualized? If you show mastery do you jump over sections? Is there an assessment? How do the teaching segments work and how long are they? What sort of reports/feedback do parents get? Can you create quizzes? I guess I am asking how the individualized instruction plays out in EPGY as compared to Aleks.
We switched over to EPGY for more "depth" after completing 3rd/4th/5th on ALEKS last fall.
EPGY & ALEKS operate with the same basic strategy of not forcing the kids to do fifty problems if the kids can nail it in four.
EPGY does not have anything like ALEKS' Periodic Assessment.
EPGY has no function for creating quizzes.
EPGY gives basic as-of-the-moment % complete & % accuracy for each strand, but not much else.
EPGY's "teaching" segments are of some value, and while sometimes better than the "Explain" button in ALEKS, they aren't nearly as dynamic as Thinkwell's lectures.
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Here are some things I miss from ALEKS:
- Detailed solutions to every exercise
- Letting the student "pick his poison" from the PIE
- Manual quiz generation
- Automatic periodic assessments
- Dynamic problem generation that gives seemingly unlimited pool of questions for each topic.
- Detailed progress & historical reports
(Especially "what he did & when" detail)
- Comparatively trouble-free interface
But we're sticking it out with EPGY for 6th because of the greater depth overall and especially the thick, juicy strands on Probability & Statistics. I've also enjoyed the interaction with our EPGY tutor -- she's been very supportive and extremely responsive. I also like the Session Playback so I can see specific answers given to each question -- similar to the detailed quiz report in ALEKS, I suppose.
If EPGY & ALEKS could join forces -- using EPGY's content & ALEKS's technology - I'd be very happy. I'd be happier still if they could get Dr. Burger from Thinkwell to do the lectures.
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Either worked fine for our son as an independent learning environment & he used both in the classroom as a replacement curriculum. But when he hit some hard stuff along the way and he was unable to get help from his teacher, the ability to "bail" in ALEKS and pick something different from his Pie was key, and we really missed this feature in EPGY. There's a "give up" option in EPGY, but it doesn't prevent a topic from coming back during the same session.
Our son is not so internally driven that he is interested in slogging through this entirely on his own -- especially the new and/or hard stuff. While he learns very quickly, he still needs to be "taught" & "coached." His teacher has recently allowed us to "homeschool" for his math period and DS's attitude and accuracy have improved considerably since then.
We're going to give Thinkwell a test drive before we commit to anything for pre-algebra & beyond.
