The features of the Instructor Module make it possible to prepare students for specific topics that they are going to work on, and to reinforce and expand on knowledge that students have recently acquired. This involves either guiding lectures or focused instruction to small groups of students based on data obtained from ALEKS.

The two kinds of teaching opportunities cued by ALEKS come from two types of information maintained by the system for students over the entire time that they use it: the set of items a student is "ready to learn" (or "outer fringe" of the student's knowledge state), and the set of items most recently learned ("what students can do," the "highest" topics in the student's knowledge state, called the "inner fringe"). (See the Instructor's Manual under "Inner and Outer Fringes of a Knowledge State," in the chapter "Knowledge Spaces and the Theory Behind ALEKS".) The items "ready to learn" are the topics a student may normally choose to work on in ALEKS; the items recently learned ("what a student can do") are considered the least secure and most likely to need reinforcement. (These items can be reviewed by clicking the Review button.) When the students are logged on to ALEKS, these two types of information are used automatically to guide and manage their learning. The instructor, however, can also view the inner and outer fringes in a convenient format to plan focused instruction that will parallel, supplement, and enhance the individual work that their students are doing in ALEKS.

To find this information for a course, the instructor can enter the Instructor Module and select the course, then click on Reports and select the ALEKS Pie report. This report represents the average student in the given course, and displays the weaknesses and strengths of the course as a whole. The Show drop-down box can be used to filter the report by "Current Learning," "Most Recent Knowledge Check," or "Initial Knowledge Check." Complete details on which topics students have mastered, not mastered, and are ready to learn in the course are available in the section below the pie chart and can be viewed by Objectives (if textbook integration or intermediate objectives are being used) or ALEKS Table of Contents.

Using the ALEKS Pie Report we can see a breakdown of student mastery for each topic, send messages directly to students, and view additional topics that a group of students is ready to learn. The purpose of this analysis is that the instructor may pick one or more topics from the list and schedule small-group sessions of focused instruction.

The following are examples that illustrate how these features may be used.

Example 1: Basic

On a Friday evening, the instructor sits down to plan lessons for the following week. He or she logs onto ALEKS, selects the name of a course in Financial Accounting, and clicks on "ALEKS Pie" under "Reports" to access the ALEKS Pie Report. A pie chart appears showing the average profile of mastery in the course. The "slice" of the pie chart for Basic Transactions and Financial Statements is full to about 90 percent; the slices for Adjusting Entries, Closing Process and Financial Statements, and Merchandising Accounting are filled much less, ranging between 20 and 40 percent. This indicates that lessons for the week may focus profitably on the latter three areas.

Example 2: Intermediate

On a weekend afternoon, the instructor logs on to ALEKS, selects the name of a course in Financial Accounting, and clicks on "ALEKS Pie" under "Reports" to access the ALEKS Pie Report. Next the instructor clicks on the "View all topics" toggle, in either the ALEKS tab or the Objectives tab, and when the list of topics appears, the instructor scans this list for items of particular difficulty. "Revenue recognition" has 16 students currently able to choose this topic from their pie charts. The instructor notes this topic down for class discussion early in the week. With the benefit of some timely preparation, the students can be expected to master this troublesome topic with less difficulty.

Example 3: Advanced

On a Monday morning, the instructor logs on to his or her ALEKS account, selects the name of a course in Financial Accounting, and clicks on "ALEKS Pie" under "Reports" to access the ALEKS Pie Report. Next, the instructor clicks on the "View all topics" toggle, in either the ALEKS tab or the Objectives tab, and the list of topics appears, clearly showing what students have mastered, not mastered and are ready to learn. The experience and expertise of the instructor are used to used to plan with this information. Suppose that there is only time in the week's schedule for two small group sessions. (The ALEKS class has only one hour in the lab, and ten minutes are set aside to speak with each small group; the remaining forty minutes are for helping students in the lab.) The instructor will look over the topics with two questions in mind: which topics have the greatest numbers of students, and which are most worth discussing.

For example, looking at the list of topics "Ready to learn," the instructor sees "Adjusting entries: Deferrals, problem type 1." The instructor knows from experience that students have difficulty with the concept, and that they are more successful with it if they have had a chance to review. This topic has twelve students out of thirty in the class. The instructor uses the message feature to send a note to these students, asking them to meet in the front of the room at the beginning of the lab; the students will receive this note the next time they log on to ALEKS, no later than the beginning of that lab.

Looking over the list of topics "Mastered," the instructor sees "Effect of transactions on accounts," with ten students. Although the number of students is less than for other topics, this one seems to the instructor richer in its content of accounting culture than the others. Thus this is chosen as the second topic, and a second message is sent to these students, to meet at the front of the room, ten minutes into the lab.