Worcester Polytechnic Institute

The purpose of this project is to develop a conversational artificial intelligence (AI) tutor (CAIT- pronounced as "Kate") to support independent math practice for middle school students who struggle with math and, otherwise, may not have access to after-school tutoring. CAIT will be integrated into ASSISTments, an existing, freely available, and evidence-based online math platform with widely used homework assignments from open education resources (OER). Through this work, the project team ...

The goal of this project is to make education research more widely available and efficient by building the necessary infrastructure for an existing online digital platform. The new infrastructure that will be built during this project will enable researchers to run studies within open education resources (OER). An additional goal is to help researchers explore ways to increase student learning for the 500,000 students who use the ASSISTments digital platform. Educators need to know what work...

The purpose of this project is to test the efficacy of From Here to There (FH2T), an interactive touch-based application developed with prior IES funding (Learning the Visual Structure of Algebra Through Dynamic Interactions with Notation). FH2T is designed to improve students' conceptual understanding of algebraic ideas. Algebra is foundational for understanding advanced mathematics; however, many middle and high school students fail to understand basic algebraic concepts. In FH2T, math sym...

The purpose of the project is to develop and test a Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) curriculum to improve STEM teaching and learning in prekindergarten classrooms. The Seeds of STEM intervention will focus on children's understanding of science and engineering concepts and professional development support for early childhood educators. The ability to apply STEM concepts and skills for solving a variety of problems is considered key for students' future success as well as th...

In the early 2000s, a key educational priority was to use summative assessment both as a measure of learner progress and as an incentive for school improvement. At the same time, many educators and researchers supported also using formative assessment, or assessment for screening, monitoring and diagnosis to aid ongoing learning throughout the academic year. In this project, the research team created a new educational technology tool intended to improve student writing performance and writin...

The purpose of this study was to develop a computer-based intelligent tutoring system designed to support middle school students in the acquisition of flexible science inquiry and process skills in the 21st century workplace, students need to understand science more deeply and possess well-honed learning strategies that will allow them to apply their science knowledge in more flexible ways. By providing students with frequent, fine-grained performance assessments of science process skills, t...