>The Learning Assistance Center at TC3 is considering the purchase of
>two Basic Skills software packages: Learning Plus, and SkillsBank96.
>We would be very interested in any experience you have with either of
>these packages.
This semester at Hawai'i Community College we are offering a class, Math 22,
which is a prealgebra level course. As a part of the class students are
required to complete the math section of Skills Bank 3. One of the best
compliments that I can make for the software is that EVERY one of my
students has praised the program. I have set up the program where the
assignments are determined by the computer with 80% as mastery. Students
begin by taking a pretest for computation. There are 20 questions and for
each question that they miss they are assigned a set of corresponding
lessons(a teacher can customize this any way she wants). These lessons
include a tutorial of the topics missed by the student on the pretest. Then
the student is tested until the 80% mastery is achieved. There are four
sections of Skills Bank math:Computation, Concepts, Word Problems and
Algebra and Geometry. I use the Skills Bank as a diagnostic. I explain to my
students that they will have a printed inventory of their strengths and
weaknesses in basic math at the end of the semester.
We also use the Skills Bank for our reading program where it also has
achieved high marks.
The drawbacks of the program are its level ("remedial") and the fact that
there are too few lessons in Skills Bank 3 to be used for a stand alone
reading program.
The Skills Bank 3 is being replaced by Skills Bank 96 (which we have
ordered). The upgrade has expanded lessons and we look forward to looking at
it.
Bob Garry
Lopaka
Dept. of Mathematics
Hawai'i Community College
200 Kawili St.
Hilo, Hawai'i 96720-4091
(808) 933-3429
http://tlc.uhh.hawaii.edu/wwwmath/lopaka.html