McGraw-Hill Reviews 44

Honestly, I would give 0 stars if I could, Alek puts all my peers through torture every week, they expect me to do 10 topics a week and get into algebra? Heck no! It will mark my answers wrong for not capitalizing letters, and why does it have to add a graph to EVERY QUESTION. When am I ever going to be doing angles and use a line graph. Overall if you're looking for a math program DO NOT waste your money or time on Alek- it's basically torture.

Okay, so I was doing history for McGraw Hill and it says “type the answer.” So I do, and it gets listed as wrong. Astonishing part, the correct answer is the exact same as the answer I inputted. Fix this bullshit website now!

Their online software is the absolute worst garbage I've ever used and they know it's a crime to charge $140 for it. My professor sometimes has to make points adjustments because I can't figure out why an answer is marked as wrong and then when she looks at it, she confirms that I have the right answer. This software and company are that staggeringly bad. The way I vet future courses from now on will include making sure they use nothing from McGraw Hill.

It is slow, says right answers are wrong, has this dumb knowledge checks that are annoying and stressful, it remove process if you get one wrong and teaches you the wrong answers.

Such a joke. I learn absolutely nothing. How on earth am I expected to remember 25 topics within one week? And then I have to take a knowledge check on over 100 topics as if anyone is able to remember any of that? Then I get one question wrong and it automatically means that the questions I got right previously are now wrong lol oh my God what a joke

Well first I need to say that ALEKS is the worst education Platform out there! There are plenty of problems I can mention. It is filled with bugs, kicks you out constantly, and tells you your wrong when your right!!! Like, wtf.

To add on that last part you need to picture yourself taking a math test. So lets say you get the first problem right. Then you move on to the second problem and you get it wrong. But then since you got the second one wrong, your teacher takes the points from your second one AND the first one(Even though the first one was right). ITS NOT FAIR AND NO ONE SHOULD USE IT!!!
If you really want to teach math effectively, you should fix your crappy website and help students learn by not marking them wrong on questions they got right!

Worst platform ever. It's not even close. Awful customer service, non-user-friendly software that makes it difficult to purchase materials you need, and an awful website design. McGraw-Hill is as bad as it gets

Mcgraw hill is a mess. They have awful textbooks and they log you out constantly. The entire 3 part learning module they promote is awful. The information in the books is fine I guess? But their learning modules JUST suck.

Horrible platform. It's not recording all your answers and marks some as bad. Contacted Customer Support and it was a waste of time. The person basically guided me where to check my missing answers. Where I contacted them that my answers were missing. Total joke!!!! You pay $100 for the access and you get this in return? After more explanations from my end what is my issue, I was informed it was forwarded to engineering team and when I asked when I will hear back I saw told they don't know. How on earth you are an educational platform and can't provide timeline when I can expect your feedback and correction of this issue. If any professors are reading. Please don't use this platform!!!!! only issues no support or help. I dealt with Katerina- and I wasn't impressed. If you are not willing to assist your customer don't work in CS role!

ALEKS is a platform designed both as an intervention program, while also placing people into different classes up to Calculus based on how well they perform on their pre-test. However, there have been quite a few issues I've personally seen with the application:

- Bugs
Many times while putting in the correct answer, and making sure it is, indeed the correct answer, and checking every input box to ensure the answer is set up correctly, the application has, in my experience, marked my answer incorrect at least a couple times.

- Not good at burning into the mind
The way ALEKS is set up is being given a topic, showing an example on why the inequality translates over into the answer, while occasionally placing in vocabulary words here, and there. Once one is ready to test themselves, they are given either three or five questions to answer, although being on a streak will allow double credit, reducing the goal margin to two to three correct answers in a row. With that in mind, especially since the application never covers the topic again once complete, it can be very difficult to remember the topics one is taught.

- Frustrating on the student's end
I have seen, in many cases, students being frustrated over getting answers wrong, and seeing the reason why is very understandable. After a while, if a student continues to get a certain topic wrong, the application will skip the topic, and this can be very infuriating to some students, as they would like to force the application to redo the topic, and to do that, right now, at least, is much easier said than done, bringing us to the next issue.

- Hard to Navigate
Trying to force ALEKS to redo a topic is like trying to find a needle in a haystack: You must remember the exact name of the topic to be able to attempt re-doing the topic, not to mention other issues, like trying to find full reports on your progress. It is much harder to do than it looks.

- Student Consensus
Many fellow students of mine have used the application much similar to the way I do, and we have all unanimously said we all dislike ALEKS for similar reasons mentioned above.

With that, I believe that, overall, ALEKS is not the best way to teach students mathematics, especially with its hard-to-navigate design, and frustrating way of treating students. Some of these issues can be easily resolved, but ALEKS, unfortunately, just hasn't been able to fix them. Hoping for the day ALEKS finally gets its act together, but for now, it's straight up 1/5 stars. Not fun, not enjoyable, and will suck your enthusiasm away from everything.

Nothing is pleasant when it comes to this company. Smartbook assignments are godawful and have grammatical errors, so-and-so answers which are sometimes misleading, and every time you get something wrong, they add another question. I recently had to contact their support regarding software issues on their website, and they firstly did not understand what I was saying half the time and would talk about something completely unrelated. Then, when one of my answers took a mere three minutes, they said, "well, looks like that's all you need today." and closed the live chat. All of those messages of clarifications and transfers and yattah yattah and oh my god what a joke of a company. So expensive too for no reason

Aleks is the worst kind of "learning" platform there is. Basically, if Aleks didn't exist, my life would be a lot better.

Forced to use this service, pay 100s of dollars for textbooks that I cant even download or copy and paste to make notes. Only good feature is the read aloud but i can get that for free anyway. Do not recommend

On the phone for a long time with tech support and they couldn't even fix my problem, so I guess I'm sending an email to my professor to explain to him what's going on and most likely won't be able to take my exam since it keeps popping up error. What a waste of time.

If ALEKS had zero stars, I have chosen to give this site 0. This is a horrible math program but not because of the math. I have had so many problems, on multiple occasions, where I put in the correct answer and I was marked incorrect! Maddening, I can't believe schools are using this crap! They know about the technical issues at my school but we still have to use it. Cheap POS!

So, for an intro, i am taking advanced classes on this site, and have been for several years, and, as every other review states, ALEKS, by McGrawHill, is by far the worst "learning website" that I have ever used.

The user interface is boring, the problems will never load, and the "advanced" classes being "taught" are actually a year behind what non-advanced students are learning.

Also, the fact that it tells you to "take a break" after getting 5 questions wrong is extremely infuriating, especially considering that it will lock you out for 2+ hours.

Professors, Teachers, Parents, this website is not worth the money or the time. Do not use.

For more ALEKS by McGrawHill reviews go to the Sitejabber page.

It's crazy that students have to do a specific amount of these every week (or at least at my school). The explanations are terrible, the questions don't make much sense, and sometimes when I put in the correct answer they will still mark it as wrong. If you're a teacher thinking about maybe using this, don't.

I Have gotten a question wrong yet it was right!

One of the worst homework sites that I ever had the displeasure of using. Extremely time consuming and not very helpful when it comes to educating. Even my own professor said that Aleks homework questions don't help with exam material. The only positive that this website has is transferring access towards a textbook you already bought from one class to another.

My main issue with this program is that I had to download a Google Chrome Extension called "Proctorio" that was sketchy, and online reviews saying that it is unsafe to use or download. When I presented this information to my professor, he told me that the people online were lying and that it was completely safe.
I've been continuing to send my professor articles and blog posts about the unsafe nature about the extension, but he doesn't seem to care. Please use EXTREME caution if you have to download "Proctorio".