Foundations Newsletter

The beginning of each semester brings about the usual stories of students who believe they have somehow been misplaced in a lower level. Their stories usually have one thing in common and that is “they can’t understand how this happened”. Once you assure them it is not a mistake, most students feel resentment and at times may even fight the fact they had to start at the beginning. Last semester was no different, with one student coming to me shocked that she had received a zero in her initial Alex assessment. Her claim that she had answered questions and could not understand how she failed EVERY question was truly surprising even to me. I sat her down and explained to her that she may have not understood the topics and had been guessing. In the end I explained to her that rather than spend her energy and time trying to figure out how this happened she would be better off spending her time and energy actually trying to fix the problem.

How does anyone fix such a problem, was the question she had. “Easy”, I told her, “you work in class, at home, in your free time, anytime”, and this is exactly what she did. This student actually took my advice. Not only did she come to class every day and worked in class but she worked from home. She completed an average of 20 topics per day for 23 days. In the end she found SUCCESS. She was able to go from ZERO on the initial assessment to a 363 /400 points on the comprehensive exam. This means she received an A in the course in Math 020.

This is not to say that all students can go from zero to passing in such a short time but using Alex the more serious students will be able to succeed more quickly, because the program allows students to manage their own time and work independently. ALEKS teaches them responsibility which is key to their educational success.