Product Review of Knewton-Alta

Technology is all around us and constantly tracking our purchases, browsing habits, and entertainment preferences. Why not use technology’s tracking abilities to our benefit? Knewton-Alta helps learners to improve their productivity and learn their common study tactics and routines. It tracks previous performance and helps to create a unique path for each learner. Every learner has different learning habits and succeeds in different ways, and Knewton-Alta can pick up on each learner’s nuances. The tracking information can be linked to a educator to help them identify the best ways to present new material and determine which topics need the most attention.
Website: https://www.knewton.com/
What Users Love About the App
“The courseware is truly adaptive. It takes what the student is doing, analyzes it, and gives it questions and instruction where it predicts the student us currently in their learning. The knowledge map and deep analysis done truly helps students master the material and move on.”
“Alta is great at adapting to a student’s knowledge level and helping “fill the cracks” in their foundation. The ability for a student to remediate and review prior topics is great for students returning to school after an absence. This product has made all the difference for one of my non-traditional students as he is able to utilize readings and videos to review material from previous courses.”
“I like how students who understand the material can get through the homework quickly and students who need more practice get it. The fact the materials used are OER fits into the philosophy of my college. The overall cost to students is quite reasonable. And I love the integration of DESMOS with the homework and student instructional assistance.”
“The adaptive feature of Alta is my favorite feature. This alone puts Alta a cut above the rest.. This empowers students by individualizing their experiences, and paves the way for their successes.”
“Ease of use. Lots of support from knewton in setting up the course, back mapping to learning outcomes and real time help. It is affordable and adaptive. Personalized for each user yet I can control what topics students need to work on a given date.”
What Users Dislike About the App
“It is not always as clear what needs to be taught for each section unless you manually review each homework section’s instruction. The OpenStax book for Statistics is not very robust.”
“In some cases, Alta presents problems unlike what we have included in our faculty-created workbook.”
“Most of the lower level classes at my school do not allow calculator use on exams. However, some problems in the alta assignment ask for approximations or use large numbers.”
“I dislike the sometimes inflexibility of the program. Students state that they can only give answers in certain formats that often aren’t expressly asked for. Mathematical answers can be different but equivalent. I wish the program could accept a greater variety of answer forms.”
“Sometimes content that is presented is turned around for students and they can’t make that jump to something presented in class and they think it is a totally different concept.’