Using an Intelligent Tutoring System to increase parent engagement in student learning By Zach Broderick, Christine O’Connor, Courtney Mulcahy, Cristina Heffernan and Neil Heffernan Parent Notification Study  ASSISTment ( is a free web-based math tutor developed at WPI for the purpose of researching student learning and giving teachers real time data while not wasting students’ time.  ASSISTment is used by thousands of students in Massachusetts and other states. It has content that covers all 5 strands of math for 6th through 10th grade.  ASSISTment provides extensive data to students, teachers, researchers, and now parents. This allows teachers and students to engage in data-driven instruction, also known as formative assessment. ASSISTment Analysis CollaboratorsSponsors About  A feature was recently added to ASSISTment allowing parents to create accounts so that they too could view data on their child’s performance and receive messages from their teachers.  This year, we ran a study where we gave the parents of 4 of our math classes a survey measuring how involved they felt they were in their child’s education. We also had them sign up for accounts on ASSISTment.  For 75 days we sent them messages through the ASSISTment system, some general and some individualized to the particular student.  We just recently gave the post-survey. Our goal is to see whether or not this feature increases parent involvement in student learning. 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 Christine and Courtney and their students and help them effectively use the ASSISTment system. Christine O’Connor and Courtney Mulcahy 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 ASSISTment. He is the PI on the GK12/PIMSE grant and this study. Contact: Neil Heffernan Zach Broderick  Results from the post-survey are still coming in at this time. However, initial results look positive.  Between our four classes we had 86 students total. Of those, 63 (73%) of their parents responded to our request to have them sign up for accounts on ASSISTment. Of those, 47 (75%) actively logged in to view messages throughout the study.  Over the 75 days, we sent out a total of 46 messages through ASSISTment. Messages to individual students or small groups comprised 29 of those messages. The other 17 were general messages related to class activity.  Based on our limited survey results thus far, parents have indicated that the notification feature has increased their awareness of what is going on in their students’ classroom. It has also increased the amount of time they spend on ASSISTment. [LEFT] General Messages About 37% of the messages were sent out to all of the parents at once. These messages typically contained information about what topics were being discussed in the classroom and reminders about upcoming exams and projects. The goal was to keep parents informed about what was going on in their students’ educational lives, as students are often not forthcoming with this information. Our hope was that keeping parents up to date would allow them to engage their student in conversation about their schoolwork and play a more active role in their education. For example, we often suggested that parents ask their students about a particular topic at the dinner table. [RIGHT] Individualized Messages The majority of messages we sent out to parents concerned only one student or a small group. Unfortunately, it was not feasible to send personal messages to every parent, but the messages we did send seemed to have a big impact. The screenshot on the right shows messages concerning the same student. He is initially struggling with his schoolwork but then turns himself around, presumably because of parent intervention. [BELOW] Parent Accounts on ASSISTment As part of this study, parents were given accounts on ASSISTment. This allowed them to log in at any time and check on their student’s academic performance, as can be seen in the screenshot below. From this page, they can see what assignments their student has completed, how they scored, upcoming assignments that are due, and reports on daily activity. One of our goals was to increase parent usage of these features by compelling them to log in and view messages from teachers. [LEFT] Parent Survey In order to measure whether or not the parent notification feature increased parent engagement in student learning, we gave them a survey before the study asking them how involved they felt they were in their child’s learning. We then gave another survey 75 days later asking similar questions, allowing us to look for any increases in feelings of engagement caused by our intervention. So far, results look positive. [ABOVE] Sending messages from the Item Report One of ASSISTment’s most powerful features is the ability to view detailed reports on student performance data. One of the more popular reports is the Item Report, which shows a teacher (or student or parent) how a student (or students) did on each problem in a particular assignment—whether they answered correctly, what they answered, what the most common wrong answer was, etc. The parent notification feature allows teachers to type comments directly into the Item Report. These comments are then turned into messages that are sent directly to parents with a link to the Item Report embedded directly in the message. This allows parents to instantly see the context in which the comment was made. [BELOW] Notification Whenever a parent received a message on ASSISTment, they would receive an notification allowing them to automatically log in and check the message. We did not embed the message in the in order to encourage them to log in. [LEFT] Parent Comments Parents shared their thoughts with us regarding the parent notification feature and ASSISTment on the post-survey. Overall, the feedback was very positive and encouraging—it seems such a feature is something parents highly desire. To the left is a selection of some of the more exemplary feedback.