McGraw-Hill Education and Austin Community College unveiled the world's largest "math emporium," a 600-seat lab that has the capacity to serve half of the district's over 41,000 credit students in developmental math at the 2014 annual EDUCAUSE conference. Known as the ACCelerator, the emporium is contained within a state-of-the art learning center built on the former site of Austin's Highland Mall, in a 200,000 square foot space previously occupied by J.C. Penney. The ACCelerator is powered by McGraw-Hill Education's adaptive math program, ALEKS®.
The emporium model for math education – sometimes called the "solution to the math problem" – reimagines how colleges approach developmental math education. While college freshmen who arrived unprepared for college-level math would historically have been required to complete extensive developmental math courses before moving on to credit-bearing coursework, the new emporium model allows each student to more efficiently and effectively address his or her specific knowledge deficiencies, ultimately allowing for a faster route to higher-level courses.
ALEKS uses research-based artificial intelligence to rapidly and precisely determine each student's level of knowledge, pinpointing exactly what a student knows and doesn't know. ALEKS then instructs students on the topics they're most ready to learn, constantly updating each student's knowledge state and adapting to the student's individualized learning needs. The solution is designed to be highly flexible for students and schools with varied technology capabilities.
ALEKS, which is already being used in colleges throughout the country, has been demonstrated to significantly improve math readiness and retention. In recent findings from the University of Northern Iowa, ALEKS was shown to increase retention among at-risk mathematics students from 40 percent to 75 percent in some courses.
