<p>DS has taken (and passed) geometry but I don't feel has a strong grasp of it. DH and I have talked about him re-taking in summer school, but he's loathe to spend six weeks in school this summer (imagine that!). I hear BYU online classes are good, but just read about aleks on another thread. Seems this might be a more targeted approach to address particular areas of weakness? Anybody have experience with one or the other? Or another suggestion? Again, he does not need this for credit, but, honestly, mean old mom is looking ahead to the SATs. (I think his older brothers thought they were a little weak on geometry when taking of the SATs.)</p>
<p>My college uses ALEKS for our pre-college math classes. I think that it is a great program that does a good job of assessing where a student needs help. The nice thing is that ALEKS is keyed to several well-known textbooks, so you can use the program and a textbook in tandem. You can also use it as a standalone program. If you go to the website, [ALEKS</a> – Assessment and Learning, K-12, Higher Education, Automated Tutor, Math](<a href=“ALEKS – Adaptive Learning & Assessment for Math, Chemistry, Statistics & More”>http://www.aleks.com/) you can do a free trial to see what you think. You can purchase use of the program for $20 per month, so it is not much of a financial commitment to see if it will work for you.</p>
<p>I have no idea how ALEKS would compare to the BYU online math classes, as I am unfamiliar with the latter. I can tell you that most online math classes make use of one of small number of computer math programs;
ALEKS
MyMathLab
Hawkes Learning Systems
Carnegie Learning</p>
<p>I guess 2 things come to mind. You could buy a review SAT book- have him take a practice test- and see if there is a weakness in the geometry section. D2 took the online BYU geometry in the summer to get ahead and then took calculus a-b,b-c her junior year. Her rural public school was familiar with it and accepted the proctored test score of A as credit but a pass. she got a 750 math SAT. -as support i took the online class right along side her and took the practice test too.</p>
<p>I’ve heard pretty good stuff about BYU online.</p>
<p>You also might want to check out APEX Learning: [Apex</a> Learning](<a href=“http://www.apexlearning.com/]Apex”>http://www.apexlearning.com/)</p>
<p>I don’t know about BYU Geometry. But – D signed up to take BYU Algebra 2 (or Algebra 2/Trig) and the required textbook had a significant number of errors in the first few chapters. I was quite disappointed in it, since that just makes the math that much harder. Later I looked on Amazon and quite a few of the reviews mentioned frequent errors as a problem. Ultimately we decided this class was not worthwhile, and she dropped it. I was disappointed that they would have chosen a book with those kinds of problems.</p>
<p>You should let them know, arabrab. I’m sure they would appreciate that kind of knowledge.</p>
<p>I would go with Aleks, which I am quite familiar with.
Do not know about BUY Geometry, but their intro physics class was not good at all for my kid.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for the responses. I’m leaning toward giving ALEKS a try–seems we could see how that goes and if necessary move on from there. I saw on their web site about the ~$20 monthly fee, but that almost seems too low? Is it really just month-by-month (no required minimum number of months)? And that’s unlimited access, or for just one course?</p>
<p>I believe that you can only take one math course at a time on Aleks.
They used to have 48 hour trial period that you could register for online and see how it goes. And yes, I paid $20/month and had no problems with cancellation when needed.
If you register through the school, the fee is even lower ;)</p>
<p>I also paid $20 a month and had no problem when I canceled. Their algebra program has been great for my daughter and the only reason I canceled was because she was able to continue to log on and use it through the school’s subscription.</p>
<p>Good–thanks. We’re really only interested in the one subject (although now I’m wondering why I didn’t look into this for my older ones, who both could have used some shoring up in math)–it just seems so relatively cheap! I was just wondering if I was missing something.</p>
<p>You aren’t missing anything. In the good old days, when ALEKS came on a CD-ROM, it cost about $40 for one course. When students purchase ALEKS for use in one of our courses today, it costs about $45 to obtain an access code that is good for the 3 months of the course. So, our students are paying less than $20 per month to use the program. Some of our courses require the purchase of a >$100 textbook, so that ends up making the ALEKS part of the course look pretty cheap.</p>