MathHelp offers a number of online courses, but in this review, I feature their high school courses: Pre-Algebra, Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2. (They also offer supplemental courses for grades five and six that are similar in design.)
A free trial at MathHelp’s website provides the first ten lessons of each course for free, so you can get a good idea of how the courses work before you subscribe.
Subscriptions for homeschoolers are by the month or the year. With a single subscription you get access to Pre-Algebra through Algebra 2 as well as their supplemental courses, so this might be a super bargain if you have two or more students who can use different courses. Each subscription provides a single student name and access code, so you cannot distinguish and track student progress if more than one student were to try taking the same course at the same time. If you have two students taking the same course, it makes sense to subscribe for a second student; the second subscription price is heavily discounted.
These are complete courses. However, for those who want to use MathHelp as a supplement, they have provided a correlation of lessons to texts commonly used in public schools. These include correlations for most of the pertinent Saxon textbooks.
Probably more useful is the search box on the website where you can type in a math topic, and the system brings up a list of one or more lessons where that topic is addressed. Students are not limited to using only lessons from a single course! This might be especially helpful for students who need to review topics taught at earlier levels.
Lessons are presented in a video screen on the computer with course creator Mike Maggart or another teacher leading each lesson on a whiteboard. (You will need your computer speakers or a headset to listen to the audio for the presentation.) A notes section, viewed by pushing a button on the lesson screen, details the primary concepts of the lesson and can be printed out for reference and review. Practice problems are also provided (along with answers for self-checking). Then there’s a self-test for each lesson that is automatically corrected. Scores for these self-tests are recorded and can be referenced by the parent or teacher online. In addition, each lesson has a “deep thought” problem for those needing an extra challenge.
Lessons are grouped into chapters, and chapters are grouped into units with another quiz at the end of each unit. Lessons are very thorough and offer a number of ways for students to learn and practice the material. Explanations are excellent. All these features make this one of the most truly independent-learning high school math courses.
On a personal note, a friend of mine who teaches continuing education for older students who struggle with learning in the regular classroom raved about these courses and has now used them with a number of students.
