Learning Developmental Math

erpadmin

The wifey is inspired to do college work since I'm about to finish WGU. She has never been to college, and it's been close to two decades since she's touched a math course.

I know there's a couple of folks on here that have had similar issues learning/relearning basic math. Were there any resources that dumbed down to you or others (preferably video, but reading on the web is good too) that you can recommend that she can get the basics down? I pointed her out to purplemath.com (since that helped me) but she might need something a bit easier.

This isn't an intelligence thing, it's more of a lack of confidence (kind of what I went through with math, but her's is much worse.) Anything you guys can recommend would be most appreciated. I offered to help her out with some of this, but like me, she wants to do this on her own.

alan2308

I use Khan Academy when I need to brush up on a topic. They have pretty much everything (arithmetic, developmental math, up through calculus) there in nice 10 minute bite sized pieces.

Edit: And it's not just math, but a lot of different academic topics.

cyberguypr

Here's my story. I am taking 4 classes this semester, including my nightmare: college algebra. Initially I struggled with it. I got a 68% on my first test. I was mad as hell. I sat down and refused to let it beat me. Long story short, I got a 92 on the second test. Third test is this Saturday and I feel very confident. As you mention, my problem was confidence. I was 100% positive there was no way I couldn pass the class. After that massive fail on the first test I just hit the book harder. I added a few web resources and a few cheap college algebra books along with the solutions manual that I got off Amazon (after I bought the manuals I found some of them for free on Solutions Manual | Cramster.com). Instead of doing the few exercises assigned by the professor I started doing all of them. Eventually I was able to back track through problems and was able to find where I made mistakes. Little by little it all started making sense.

Another tool that helped me a lot were videos. Books sometimes skip steps and leave you wondering where the heck a result came from. I used algebasics™ Algebra Tutorials. Their step by step tutorials are very good.

Everyone

I'm interested in seeing responses to this too. Checking out that purplemath.com site now. I need to go take an assessment test so I can enroll in the 4 general education classes I need to go back and finish for my degree. I'm afraid of the math part. I'm really good at practical math, and pretty good with statistics, but when you start throwing letters into things for Algebra, I can't remember any of it. If I don't score high enough on the assessment, I'll have to do remedial classes that don't count for any credits I need before I can take the class that does count. I really don't want to have to do that.

N2IT

alan2308 wrote: »

I use Khan Academy when I need to brush up on a topic. They have pretty much everything (arithmetic, developmental math, up through calculus) there in nice 10 minute bite sized pieces.

Edit: And it's not just math, but a lot of different academic topics.

Slowhand turned me onto Khan's and it is effective. I really love the way he covers topics and explains everything. Have you wife check out a few of his modules and see what she learns. I went back to review standard deviations and reviewed HCL's and LCL's. His stats modules are very interesting and informational.

TLeTourneau

Another vote for Khan Academy. I've used it and the content is great!

Cisco Inferno

got an A in trigonometry last semester.
Khan is god.

erpadmin

I texted her to check out Khan Academy yesterday. She's found it very helpful and was confident enough to ask me about real numbers. When I told her what it was it validated what she learned. Told her that "|" equals a "pipe."

You guys rock and will all get rep! Within the next couple of weeks, I'll pay for her to take just the Developmental Algebra and Developmental Writing course at Straighterline. When she passes both, I'll put in for the freshman class.