The fundamental concept in this material is the idea of giving people the skills that they need in order to be successful in the workplace. The texts, the ACT developed booklets, have been created at five (5) different levels of skills, ranging from Level 3 to Level 7. Students have been given an assessment instrument that places each student at the appropriate starting level. Each job classification has been identified as requiring a particular level of skills. It is the task of this course to move students from their starting level toward, or beyond, the level required by their position.

The ACT design of this course matches worker skills with the requirements of the job, and then aims to provide instructional materials designed for each level. This is a wonderful design. If it were possible to do this with complete precision, then students would be learning exactly the material and skills needed to be successful in their particular position. Unfortunately, life and the real world of work and employment are not as simple as the ACT design requires. Therefore, as students go through the material there will be some sections that are completely foreign to student experience in the workplace. It is hard to imagine a case where a "Customer Service Representative, II" will have to be able to compute the circumference of a circle as part of her/his job duties. However, the skill to make such a computation is in the course material for that position. We will accept such extra information as a way to expand our knowledge and skills and as a means for practicing the skills that are directly related to our positions.

Below is a table giving the topics, by lesson, for each of the five levels of the course.

Although the various textbooks have between 8 and 10 lessons, the course is given over six (6) weeks. Therefore, students need to cover more than one lesson per week. The books are designed to be self-paced and self-study. Students are encouraged to go as fast as they can through the material. Class time will be allocated to help individual students with particular problems and skills.

Students in the course will be working on different levels, using different textbooks, concentrating on different lessons, all at the same time. For this reason, it is impossible to lecture everyone on the exact topic that she/he happens to be studying at that time. Nonetheless, there will be a weekly lecture or presentation, most likely toward the middle of each three (3) hour class session. Every effort will be made to have most, if not all, of the presentation apply to all students, independent of the student's level of study or their current topic .

There is one, general, topic that covers all of the levels and all of the lessons in the course. That topic is the use of a calculator. Throughout the ACT material there are repeated references to using a calculator. However, the text does not depend on a calculator. In fact, the textbooks are lacking in any real instruction on the use of the calculator. This is left as an extra assignment for some students. We take the more extreme view that the calculator is essential to performing, understanding, and checking the mathematics that we will be doing. The lecture presentations throughout the course will focus on the use of the calculator. Thus the lectures will reinforce the ideas and skills given in the texts by reviewing those ideas and skills on the calculator.

In order to facilitate the continuous instruction on and use of calculators in the course, we have selected a particular calculator to be used. Every student in the course will be given a Sharp EL-531 calculator. A sample image of such a calculator follows: