Teachers For Research & Feedback Outcomes

Teacher engagement continues to be an integral part of product development at ASSISTments and we want to THANK YOU for your contributions to our ongoing research of usability for the features we hope to integrate into the ASSISTments platform. 

Below is a quick glance of numbers for some of our past opportunities where Teachers for Research & Feedback teachers got early access to forthcoming features!

LIVE-CHART 

The LIVE-CHART feature allows teachers to track students’ progress in real-time as they do work assigned through ASSISTments. This allows teachers to intervene when necessary.

Here is what one of the teacher participants shared during her experience: 

“ I found LIVE-CHART to be really helpful in keeping track of my students’ work as I could see if my students hadn’t started working. It also helped me figure out where my students are at and if they did or didn’t get the concept. If multiple students were flagged with “requires attention” then it let’s me know that I need to revisit the topic and maybe teach it again in the next class.” Carrie Moy 

Eight TFRF teachers contributing to the LIVE-CHART study joined 1:1 teacher meetings and focus groups giving feedback live via zoom. Meetings with the primary researcher/engineer lasted approximately 1-1.5 hours and occurred once a week for 6 weeks. Teachers paid for this opportunity and  given exclusive access to the LIVE-CHART feature during these 6 weeks. Real time observations made during this study will be integrated into further testing of the feature and teacher feedback will be incorporated into future design models. 

Student Supports for grades 6-8 in EngageNY, Illustrative Math, OpenUP & Utah Math 

Student Supports added for this beta were hints and explanations in the middle grades (6-8) Open Educational Resources curricula of Illustrative Math, Open Up, EngageNY, and Utah Math. Hundreds of hints and explanations were made available to students as they worked through these problems.

Here is what a teacher participant had to say: 

“ Several of my students have asked if there was an upgrade to ASSISTments. They mentioned that they find the videos very helpful and liked the ‘upgrade’ !”  Kate Slingo

During the Student Supports beta, 9 teacher-users gained access to a new feature that will enable access to thousands of hints and explanations to students using ASSISTments. With this feature, students can request hints (problem help that gives a string of short supports one at a time) or explanations (problem help that shows the complete explanation). 

Teachers in the beta shared insights via survey and because of their feedback, we are able to plan a bigger beta that will help fine-tune our student supports. 

‍DRIVER-SEAT Quick Comments : 

The Quick Comments feature uses AI (artificial intelligence) to read student responses to open response type problems and give teachers an estimated score and 3 possible feedback messages. Teachers can use all or part of the suggested feedback messages in their feedback to the student.

Read below for a few  of the notes teachers have shared with us regarding the QUICK COMMENTS feature: 

“ Thank you very much for this opportunity !! I am super excited about this new feature! This will be a game changer for me and my students,” - Jeremy Quilter

“It is great to have this feature - huge time saver!” - Yamuna Ramdass 

“ I am LOVING the quick comments feature - I didn't realize the first two assignments I gave had no essay scoring questions, but the most recent one did and I'm able to give better feedback and more of a variety of comments because it takes so much less time! “ - Emily Brown 

Over 50 teachers participated in the observational study for Quick Comments.  Teachers were given access to the feature and were asked to give their feedback via survey. 

To date, 38 teachers have completed the study and have shared feedback.