Research & Efficacy

This month, we shine a light on Anthony Botelho, Research Scientist at Worcester Polytechnic Institute who has been working on the federally funded project focused on helping teachers provide meaningful feedback to their students more efficiently, known as QUICK-Comments.

As schools around the country adopted remote learning last spring and this fall, demand for tutoring shot up. Read more in this article by ASSISTments co-founders Neil T. Heffernan and Cristina Heffernan

ASSISTments holds a unique position in the edtech space due to our passion for learning science and the bridge we build between educators and researchers to drive advances in education research. This post delves into two of the key components of that bridge.

Adapted from NCTM 100 Days of Professional Learning talk on how QuickComments allows teachers to give feedback powered by AI.

TeacherASSIST is an ASSISTments feature that leverages teacher crowdsourcing to amplify and support teaching and learning across all ASSISTments users. Read more about our work and research using crowdsourcing.

In this study, we put the ASSISTments platform to the test to understand the impact of artificial intelligence in education for web-based homework in comparison to traditional homework. We found that students learned reliably more in the web-based homework condition, even without the benefits of additional tutoring features such as hints and feedback messages.

SRI International ran an independent study on the efficacy of ASSISTments. This study allowed ASSISTments to meet the highest What Works Clearinghouse standard for “positive effect without reservations” and to receive a Tier 1 rating by Evidence for ESSA. The study showed that with the use of ASSISTments supported student learning as a whole and helped close achievement gaps.

This study explores the ability of an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) to increase parental engagement in student learning. A parental notification feature was developed for the web-based ASSISTments ITS that allows parents to log into their own accounts and access detailed data about their students’ performance. This research investigates the impacts of parental involvement on student learning outcomes.

We ran a randomized controlled trial on two ASSISTments features: Skill Builders and Automatic Reassessment and Relearning System (ARRS). Skill Builders allows teachers to assign individual skills practice sets and ARRS automatically reassesses students on these skills. Our study showed greater performance on those skills that were reassessed and relearned.

Over 2800 students from 43 schools from Maine participated in a year long study. 75% of students improved, find out how we affected them in a positive way.

Educators — and families — should be careful about overly relying on screens for learning, and research shows that education delivered on tablets and laptops can lead to missed opportunities. Helen Lee Boygues describes the results of a study designed using ASSISTments: students who used pencil and paper received higher scores than their peers who went without pencil and paper.

In a new publication, ASSISTments was found to boost student learning, particularly for students with lower prior mathematics achievement.

As part of the Teachers for Research and Feedback Program, learn about the research Luisa Ferrari did with ASSISTments teachers to understand if student performance improves using online learning strategies in comparison to paper-based work.