eJMT Abstract

A growing number of college students are required to take developmental mathematics courses. Different backgrounds and levels of students’ prior knowledge suggest that an individualized instructional approach may be the most effective in these courses. Such an approach is taken in the artificial intelligence-based online system ALEKS (Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces). A large Midwestern university incorporated ALEKS in remedial mathematics courses. In the first semester of ALEKS implementation some remedial mathematics sections used ALEKS while some used the traditional lecture-based approach. This study compares the two methods regarding student achievement. The participants are students from two ALEKS and two corresponding lecture-based sections. The results show that, although student scores are higher in ALEKS, the difference is not statistically significant. Some insights into ALEKS implementation are given and possible changes in the delivery are proposed.