Using an Intelligent Tutoring System to increase parental engagement in student learning with automated messages

1. Collaborators Sponsors Using an Intelligent Tutoring System to increase parental engagement in student learning with automated messages By Zach Broderick, Kevin DeNolf, Jen Dufault, Cristina Heffernan and Neil Heffernan Background Results and Analysis • The literature suggests that parental engagement in a student’s education is beneficial; however, this engagement requires access to information. • An Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) replicates the services of a human tutor in software and collects an enormous amount of fine-grained learning data on students. ASSISTments is a free web-based ITS developed at WPI. • We implemented a parental notification component for the ASSISTments system that gives parents access to the valuable data collected by ASSISTments. • We ran an exploratory study to pilot the feature and found that it increased engagement, but that we needed a stronger intervention and experiment. Background • Survey results indicated parents felt more engaged in student learning, especially those that opted to receive nightly (vs. weekly) emails. • Students completed significantly more of their homework when their parents received email notification, especially when controlling for the ceiling effect. • Qualitative feedback from parents and teachers was overwhelmingly positive. • Test scores did not improve at all as a result of the intervention. • Several statistically reliable results were obtained, and all results trended strongly in the right direction. Experiment About Experiment • Zach Broderick is a graduate student • in computer science at WPI and • works as a developer in the ASSISTment lab under his advisor Neil Heffernan. He is also a GK12/PIMSE fellow funded by the NSF to work with Kevin and Jen and their students and help them effectively use the ASSISTment system. • Kevin DeNolf and Jen Dufault are • are both math teachers at Oak • Middle School in Shrewsbury, • MA and are partner teachers in the • GK12/PIMSE program. They and • their students both participated in • this study. • Cristina Heffernan is the project • manager for the GK12/PIMSE grant. • Neil Heffernan is a professor at WPI • and creator of ASSISTments. He is • the PI on the GK12/PIMSE grant and • this study. • Contact: Neil Heffernan (nth@wpi.edu), Zach Broderick (zbrod@wpi.edu) • We developed an extension that sends automated emails to parents containing student data, thereby increasing the intervention. We hypothesized this would increase parental engagement and thus improve student performance. • We conducted a randomized controlled experiment at a local middle school with two 7th grade math teachers that already used ASSISTments in their classroom. • Parents were given a pre and post survey measuring engagement. During the second unit of the year, half of the students’ parents received email notification. Students completed 15 assignments and took a test each unit to measure performance. Results and Analysis