What do you dislike about ALEKS?
Everything.
Interface: There is way too much extra space. This space could easily be used to include a digital workspace, since I do not always have paper. Also, the interface is not very user friendly. The quiz screen is annoying to navigate, and the graph of Aleks time and topics is not very easy to use either. The displayed topics scroll bar does not show all topics that are "ready to learn", and I cannot even see all of them if I go to the pie.
Functions: The idea that you can just answer 2 questions to show understanding is just pointless. It is great to get topics out of the way, but all you have to do is get lucky and answer 2 questions correctly in a row, and you can skip the topic. Then, during the knowledge checks (which I will get to later), there is one question per topic. If you by chance get it wrong, you have to redo the topic. Not that this takes long, but it is a nuisance. I usually forget everything, due to insufficient practice (2 questions), and so I am trapped in a loop of doing and then redoing topics. Okay, on to knowledge checks. These are WAY too frequent. They take forever to finish, and during that time, you are unable to work on anything else. You can only avoid knowledge checks if your teacher cancels them/overrides them. Knowledge checks are around 30-45 questions long, and can take me around an hour. I am given them almost once every week or two. Now, let's discuss times. After 30 minutes of inactivity, you are logged out. Now, I hate this because sometimes I need to go eat or grab a snack or look up a decent explanation. And when I come back, I have to log in again, navigate to the question, and then do it. I get it, you don't want idle people. But it is still such a drag. Another thing, Aleks forces you to do certain topics or not to certain topics. It always goes in order in the scroll bar, and I can't click a "Not Ready Yet" button to dismiss the suggestion. It defaults to a weird order, and makes it very time consuming to follow your own order. And after getting a topic wrong a few times, it forces you to work on something else. It should just be a suggestion, not a mandate. I am working on a topic, and I am working hard just to be interrupted by that idiotic message. And after getting it wrong, sometimes it shows you what you submitted, and sometimes it doesn't. I would appreciate some consistency... It is very useful to see what you wrote in comparison to the answer. The progress bar also goes down when you get something wrong, which is just frustrating. You should just not get a bar for that question. I think that there should be no "double credit" either, so you have to answer 3 or 5 questions correctly. Also, those explanations are complete trash. As are the introduction screens. There should be a way for other Aleks users to write their own explanations either for themselves or for one another. It could even be restricted to your class, in the school setting.
Quicktables: These are okay... But I wish that there was an option to go for longer than 15 minutes, especially if you are playing one of the games (which I do approve of). The instructors should be customizable as well. Maybe it could be an unlock system. You can get a coin for every correct answer, and maybe lose a coin for every incorrect one. You can spend coins for cosmetics for the instructor.
Aleks is conclusively one of (if not the sole) worst programs I have ever had the displeasure of using. I would not assign Aleks assignments to my worst enemy. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.