Comparing To Business As Usual

A school principal who is deciding whether to ask his teachers to adopt ASSISTments wants to know, "Does this product work better than what schools are normally doing?" The first section highlights three randomized controlled trials where we compared ASSISTments to what schools are already doing, a "business as usual" condition. All three studies showed large and reliable benefits for ASSISTments. The second section has two papers that both show ASSISTments closes achievement gaps. The third section is where we used state test scores and other year-long measures to determine the effect of ASSISTments on learning. The fourth section is where we showed how some special features cause learning. Last, but definitely not least, in the fifth section there is a journal paper written by SRI that came out in October of 2016 that shows ASSISTments improved student learning on a broad standardized test.

Each page has a link at the bottom to the full-text version of the published work.

1. Comparing experimental conditions that give feedback with control conditions that represent "business as usual" where students don't get feedback until the next day.

   1. Estimating the effect of web-based homework. With Univ. of Illinois (UIC)

   2. Does immediate feedback while doing homework improve learning.

   3. Improving learning from homework using intelligent tutoring systems. With West Virginia University

2. Showing that ASSISTments Closes Achievement Gaps (between with lower achieving student and higher achieving students).

• 1. ASSISTments closes Achievement Gaps By Vanderbilt

  2. ASSISTments attempt to personalize learning led to better learning

3. If you are looking for other evidence that ASSISTments leads to better learning, ASSISTments has been exposed to two different quasi-experiments. These study design are not a random assignment design, so its less powerful, but both use measures of learning over a full year (i.e., like state tests or standardized achievement test.) The last one was done completely independent of WPI. Both studies showed.

• 1. Early Quasi-Experiment Using State Test Score With Carnegie Mellon University

  2. Next Generation Learning Challenge Conducted by SRI

4. Finally, there are two new features, ARRS and Parent Notification that have shown value.

• 1. Increasing Homework Completion Rates with a Feature to Connect Parents Better

  2. Increasing knowledge by automatic reassessments spaced out over time, that remediate if needed.

5. Finally,SRI is doing a 3.5 million dollar Efficacy Trial. Its a 44 school school study. (A new site that has more info on)

• 1. SRI released positive results and an sending for Peer Review a Journal Paper. By SRI

  2. Papers and Slide presented at Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE). By SRI

     1. SRI presented some additional data at the American Educational Research Association . By SRI & UMAINE