MTH 122 (CRN 21484): Math Lab for Alternative Path in Developmental Mathematics
Spring 2013
General Course Information
Chabot College
► Description: Students receive individualized assistance to improve math basic skills.
The original intention of MTH 122 is to help those students who either dropped out of a math
class or couldn’t get into a math class to improve their chance of passing their next math course by
reviewing their math skills. Because the computer system easily tracks individual learning, students who
work extra hard have the opportunity to retake the Chabot Math Assessment to advance in math. Students
who wish to advance should aim to complete their work about a month before the end of the semester, in
time for registration for the following term, so they can sign up for the right math class before it is filled.
► Instructor: MR. MING HO.
Phone: 510-723-6870.
E-mail: mho@chabotcollege.edu
Office: Room 2024. Website: http://www.chabotcollege.edu/directory/employee.asp?employeeid=367
► Class Hours: Weekly check-in in Room 3906B, during the time slot indicated on your application. I
will be talking to each student individually while you work on the computer as you
wait.
► Office Hours: Please see website above for my schedule. Please make an appointment with me if you
would like to see me outside regular drop-in office hours. I am also available during College Hour
when I have no meeting, as well as during Math Lab while I am not with other MTH 122 students.
► Required Text/Material
 ALEKS access at http://www.aleks.com. If you have trouble, see ALEKS’s support page at
http://www.aleks.com/support/contact_support, or call (714) 619-7090.
 Internet access for working on ALEKS outside of class.
 Notebook.
 E-mail account.
► Recommended Material/Resource
 Math Lab (Room 3906B) has drop-in tutoring. It has computers for you to work on ALEKS. You are
encouraged to do ALEKS there and ask tutor for help when you need it.
 Chabot Library. Hours at http://www.chabotcollege.edu/library/hours.asp.
 Chabot Assessment Center at http://www.chabotcollege.edu/counseling/assessment/.
 Flash drive or cloud storage.
 GoPrint card if you want to be able to print on campus. It is available in the Library.
► Grading option is P/NP only. You must satisfy ALL requirements below to pass:
1. Complete a personal schedule indicating hours of class, work, and study, especially marking the
hours dedicated for MTH 122.
2. Complete the minimum total hours in ALEKS: 44 hours for 1 unit or 22 hours for ½ unit.
It is your responsibility to withdraw from the course timely by the deadline. Upon the second time
you miss your weekly minimum, if it is before the W deadline, you will be dropped. If it is after the
W deadline, you will receive a NP.
► Purchase ALEKS by going to http://www.aleks.com.
 Follow directions your instructor sent you to complete the registration process and pay for
ALEKS with a credit card. Choose the 18-week access when you purchase it at the beginning of
the semester, or the appropriate length of time if you start late in the semester. If you can't pay
for it right now, use the temporary 2-week access code provided in the instructions, but your later
purchase would include these two weeks.
► ALEKS User's Guide for Higher Education Mathematics can be found at
http://www.aleks.com/highered/math/user_guides
You should take a look at the guide. Here are some highlights:
When you first log in, you will go through a tutorial, followed by an initial assessment. The initial
assessment gives you a picture of what you already know. It is very important to follow the rules for
ALEKS assessments: No help whatsoever is permitted, not even to the extent of rephrasing a problem,
and no reference of any kind. It’s just ALEKS and you, with paper and pencil, and calculator
only when allowed on a particular problem. If you receive help, the system will get a wrong idea of
what you are most ready to learn, and this will hold up your progress. If you think you don’t know the
answer, you should click “I don’t know.” (Don’t guess!)
In general, the assessment is not a test for grade. For any assessment, the main purpose is to
determine what you are most ready to learn and help you make the best progress possible toward mastery.
Not to discourage you during the assessment, you will not get immediate feedback after every problem
All the topics in the ALEKS curriculum are grouped into major areas. After you finish the initial
assessment, a pie chart will appear to show you what you know and are ready to learn. Each slice in the
pie chart represents a major area of topics. Moving the mouse over each pie reveals the topics that you are
ready to learn in the area. You are now in the Learning Mode ready to make progress! Click on any topic
offered to you to begin.
In the Learning Mode, you should do your best to solve the problems that are offered to you.
After selecting a topic, you should not lightly change topics or stop before the system tells you that you
are done or suggests choosing another concept. You should get to know the features of the Learning
Mode, especially the explanations and the mathematical dictionary. As you work, ALEKS will instantly
check your answers. In many cases it will provide information on the kind of error you may have made.
You should pay attention to this feedback and be sure to understand it.
Keep in mind that ALEKS is always giving you material that, in its estimation, you are ideally
ready to learn. It does not offer material you have already mastered, except in the Review Mode.
To go back to concepts you have already worked on, click the “Review” button on the ALEKS menu bar.
To see a report of your progress, click the “REPORT” link above the ALEKS menu bar.
As you gain mastery, topics that you learned are added to the pie and new topics appear that you
are ready to learn. Each time you work 10 hours or add 20 topics to the pie since the last assessment
(whichever comes first), a progress assessment kicks in, making sure that you are retaining what you have
learned. Again, this is not a test for a grade, but to give you feedback about your learning. You can stop in
the middle and resume later, so never be rushed to give ALEKS the wrong picture of your true abilities.
► Guideline for Working in Learning Mode
1) Keep a notebook for your ALEKS work.
2) Do all calculation by hand unless ALEKS provides a calculator for the problem.
3) It’s ok to do things in your head or skip steps if you can do them correctly, but whenever you need to
write something down, present it neatly as if on a written test. This will help you practice presenting
your work when you take a regular math course. It will also make it easier for anyone helping you to
see what you have done. Write down the expression you entered into a calculator.
4) Don’t erase work that you can’t figure out where the error is. Draw a simple line through it, and start
again. You can learn from your mistake, and it also shows your helper what you have tried.
5) Click on “EXPLANATION” button if you can’t get the answer. Take notes on or copy the explanation
for reference to help you with the next similar problem. The explanation page may also have links to
other resources, such as a textbook or videos. If you wish, you can download the textbook as a PDF
file.
6) When you ask someone for help on a problem, you should have the explanation for that or similar
problem either on the screen or your notes. Your question should center on comparing your work with
a correct example: Where are you in the steps of the explanation for your problem? How is your
problem different from similar ones you’ve done?
► A Few helpful Hints about ALEKS
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Try a different browser if ALEKS doesn’t work. Firefox appears to be troublesome on some
computers.
Do at least some review topics that appear when you log in. I won’t know if you skip them,
but if you don’t use the practice, you are more likely forget them when taking an assessment
later, in which case ALEKS will remove forgotten topics from your pie.
Never use the web browser’s BACK button to return to a previous page. In the Answer Editor, you
can “undo” or “clear.” If you realize that the answer you submitted is incorrect, you should not be
concerned. The system will most likely recognize this as a careless error based on your other past and
future answers and make allowances for it. Even if ALEKS asks you to redo a topic again, if you can
do it right the first time, you won’t have to do that problem as many times.
► Work Habits. Before you ask a question, make sure that you have read the example problems
carefully and looked up all vocabulary words used. Rather than simply saying “I don’t get it,” put in some
effort to pinpoint places that you find puzzling. You will get more out of studying this way, and you can
get right to the issue when talking to an instructor, tutor, or fellow student. When reading an example, you
may need to do extra work in your notebook to see how one step leads to the next, if it is not immediately
obvious to you. Even if you correctly answer a problem, if you have any questions about anything in your
work, get help to understand it!
It is best to schedule regular time to work on ALEKS. Put it in your calendar! A good suggestion
is four 45-minute blocks of time weekly. It’s best to spread out your work over the week rather than do all
your time in one or two days. Depending on your learning goal, you may want to spend more time after
experiencing how helpful ALEKS is to improve your math skills!
To those students who believe they just needed a brief review of the class into which they are
assessed: You are encouraged to complete the 44 hours on ALEKS before the 10th week of class so you
have the time to schedule a Chabot math assessment, giving you a chance to assess into the next class in
time for registration. Find out about your registration period for the next semester, and plan accordingly.
The Chabot math assessment does not place a student into second half of Elementary or
Intermediate Algebra. If you feel that ALEKS prepares you to enter the second half of one of these
courses into which you were originally assessed, make an appointment with your instructor outside of
class to discuss what you must do to enroll in MTH 65B or 55B next semester.
► Behavior. Both the instructor and students are responsible for maintaining an atmosphere that
promotes respect and learning. Improprieties like eating, arriving late, leaving early, and chatting disrupt
the class environment. Cell phones must be off. Always notify me if you will be absent, late, or leaving
early. You may be removed from class on the day of the offense. For serious offenses, I will require a
joint meeting with the Dean before you may return to class.
Academic dishonesty or any type of deception will not be tolerated. In particular, you are to
perform all calculations manually, unless ALEKS provides a calculator for a given problem. Ten hours on
ALEKS will be deducted for each incidence of calculator misuse.
You are welcome to help each other, but helping involves a meaningful intellectual exchange
between two people. When anyone is found to circumvent purposefully the intended use of ALEKS as a
learning tool, all parties involved will receive NP for the course.
► Advancement in Chabot Math Curriculum. Although completing MTH 122 does not meet the
prerequisite for any math course in and of itself, meeting benchmarks in ALEKS gives you opportunity to
advance in the math curriculum at Chabot:
1) After completing 44 hours in ALEKS since your last Chabot Math Assessment, you may apply to
retake the Chabot Math Assessment for higher placement. Only one such application per each fall,
spring, or summer.
2) Upon completing an ALEKS module corresponding to a Chabot math course and assessing at 80% in
a proctored ALEKS comprehensive assessment of the module, you may apply to file within the
current semester a prerequisite challenge to enroll in the following semester in a subsequent Chabot
math course. ALEKS modules corresponding to MTH 103, 104, 65, 55, 37, and 20 are available.
3) Upon completing the ALEKS module corresponding to MTH 55, you may apply to take the Math
Proficiency Exam to satisfy the math requirement for the associate degree.
Speak to the instructor if any of the above three opportunities is your goal. Your instructor will
give you more information about the application requirements for advancement.
After you log into ALEKS, the top of the screen helps you navigate.
► Getting around ALEKS
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Click on Review to practice old topics.
Click on Dictionary if you need to look up math vocabulary words.
Click on Inbox to read and send message in ALEKS.
Click on Report to see your progress.
a) In the Pie Report tab, you can see an overview of your progress, with topics you recently
mastered and topics you are ready to learn, and your assessment history.
b) In the Time ad Topic tab, you can find detail progress for each day: how much time you r
spent, which topics you attempted, and which topics you mastered. You can also find the
total amount of time spent within a date range.
5) Click on Options to manage your account, view the last topics you practiced, and see when
your account expires.
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Chabot College
MTH 122
Name: _______________________________
□ I will read the course information for MTH 122 on Mr. Ho’s Blackboard site. For help logging
into Blackboard, see http://www.chabotcollege.edu/online/Login/. I may have to wait until the
next day after enrollment to have access to Blackboard. Mr. Ho’s contact information and
schedule are at http://www.chabotcollege.edu/directory/employee.asp?employeeid=367
□ I wish to work on ALEKS…
___ To be prepared to take my next math class.
___ To advance by…
___ retaking the Chabot Assessment on _____________ (Registration for Sp 15 probably
begins around Week 13
___ completing the pie in ALEKS and taking a proctored exam.
___ To be ready to retake the TEAS on _____________
□ My goal is to work on ALEKS for ______ hours every week. Before every weekly meeting, I
will fill in the cumulative time completed up to the end of previous week.
Wk#
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From
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To
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Cumulative Time Completed
No meeting Sept. 2
No meeting Oct. 16
W Deadine Nov. 7
No meeting Nov. 10
No meeting Nov. 26-27
Finals week.
□ I will complete my class/work/study schedule on the back, especially marking the hours dedicated
for MTH 122.
Chabot College
MTH 122
Sunday
Monday
Name: _______________________________
Tuesday
Wednesday Thursday
Friday
Saturday