About ASSISTments
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- The funding that makes the ASSISTment system possible
- The people behind the ASSISTment system
Contents |
The fact sheet about ASSISTments
You can download the fact sheet here.
What is ASSISTments?
ASSISTments is a web-based tutoring program for 4th to 10th grade mathematics. The word “ASSISTments” blends tutoring “assistance” with “assessment” reporting to teachers. This gives teachers fine grained reporting on roughly 120 skills that the system tracks per grade level.
What is the goal?
No Child Left Behind urges schools and teachers to use formative assessment information to inform their classroom instruction. The dilemma is that every minute spent testing is a minute taken away from instruction. ASSISTments solves this problem by tutoring students on items they get wrong, thus providing integrated assisting of students while they are being assessed. Teachers can use this detailed assessment data to adjust their classroom instruction and pacing.
How is it used?
Math teachers assign problem sets to their students to do on the computer, and students are tutored on the items they get wrong. Teachers log on to the System and study detailed reports about their students’ difficulties and strengths. Teachers can use content developed at WPI or write their own content.
Who is using it?
In 2009, just over 4000 students used the system. Most of our cooperating schools are Middle Schools and High Schools in Worcester County, MA.
What do we know about its effectiveness?
- In Razzaq et al (2005), we showed we can predict a student’s MCAS score with a high degree of reliability.
- In the same Razzaq et al (2005), we showed that students were reliably learning.
- Students doing homework on ASSISTment learn significantly more than students using the traditional paper and pencil option.
Who built the Assistments?
In 2003, Neil Heffernan and Ken Koedinger conceived of the idea of the ASSISTment system and received funding from the US Department of Education to get started. This idea was successful, in part, due to prior funding from the Office of Naval Research to build tools to make it more cost effective to build intelligent tutoring systems. In 2004, Heffernan was funded by a National Science Foundation CAREER grant to extend the Assistment system from 8th grade up to 10th grade. Over 40 students at WPI and several full time staff at CMU helped make it all happen.
Contact Prof Neil Heffernan at WPI 508-831-5569 for more information at nth@wpi.edu. Binders at Teacher Manual
References
This document and dozens more of documents related to ASSISTments can be found here.
