AERA2017

There was an AERA symposium on some updated results from SRI. The new findings included interpreting the size of the effect to be a year worth of schooling. UMAINE reported on the interviews with teachers and how they changed their homework review practices. SRI reported on the low cost of training teachers for 2 days during the summer.

Students often experience unequal opportunities to learn from mathematics homework. In a rigorous randomized controlled trial with over 2800 seventh-grade mathematics students, we evaluated an educational technology intervention which uses the ASSISTments platform to transform knowledge about formative assessment into opportunities to enhance learning at home and in the classroom. Results demonstrated that the intervention significantly increased achievement on a standardized mathematics assessment. Students with lower prior test scores gained more, narrowing achievement gaps. The symposium addresses complementary components of the research: (1) the research design and main effects; (2) analysis of moderating and mediating factors; (3) insights on teaching practice from interviews and observations; (4) a cost-effectiveness study and (5) platform improvements for further research and scale up.