Interest-enhancing approaches to mathematics curriculum design: Illustrations and personalization

Two common interest-enhancement approaches in mathematics curriculum design are illustrations and personalization of problems to students’ interests. The objective of these experiments is to test a variety of illustrations and personalization approaches. In the illustrations experiment, students (n = 265) were randomly assigned to lessons with story problems containing decorative illustrations, contextual illustrations, diagrammatic illustrations, misleading illustrations, or no illustrations (only text [control condition]). Students’ problem-solving performance and attitudes were not affected by illustration condition, but learning was better in the control compared with contextual illustrations. In the personalization experiment, students (n = 223) were randomly assigned to story problems that were either personalized based on: a survey of their interests, their choice of interest topics, a randomly assigned interest topic, or the original nonpersonalized story problem (control). The findings indicated there were benefits for choice personalization both for performance in the problem set as well as on a later learning assessment

Continued Progress: Promising Evidence on Personalized Learning

The findings are grouped into four sections. The first section on student achievement finds that there were positive effects on student mathematics and reading performance and that the lowest-performing students made substantial gains relative to their peers. The second section on implementation and the perceptions of stakeholders finds that adoption of personalized learning practices varied considerably. Personalized learning practices that are direct extensions of current practice were more common, but implementation of some of the more challenging personalized learning strategies was less common. The third section relates implementation features to outcomes and identifies three elements of personalized learning that were being implemented in tandem in the schools with the largest achievement effects. Finally, the fourth section compares teachers' and students' survey responses to a national sample and finds some differences, such as teachers' greater use of practices that support competency-based learning and greater use of technology for personalization in the schools in this study with implementation data

A Causal-Comparative Study on the Efficacy of Intelligent Tutoring Systems on Middle-Grade Math Achievement

This study is a quantitative examination of intelligent tutoring systems in two similar suburban middle schools (grades 6-8) in the Southeastern United States. More specifically, it is a causal-comparative study purposed with examining the efficacy of intelligent tutoring systems as they relate to math achievement for students at two similar middle schools in the Midlands of South Carolina. The independent variable, use of an intelligent tutoring system in math instruction, is defined as the supplementary use of two intelligent tutoring systems, Pearson’s Math Digits and IXL, for math instruction. The dependent variable is math achievement as determined by the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) SC 6+Math test. The student data examined is archived MAP SC 6+ Math scores from the 2017-2018 school year. A one-way ANCOVA was used to compare the mean achievement gain scores of both groups, students whose math instruction included intelligent tutoring systems and students whose math instruction did not include intelligent tutoring systems, to establish whether or not there was any statistically significant difference between the adjusted population means of the two independent groups. The results showed that the adjusted mean of posttest scores of students who did not receive math instruction that involved an intelligent tutoring system were significantly higher than those who did

Personalised feedback in the promotion of responsible gambling: a brief overview

Research into gambling has shown that irrational gambling-related cognitions linked to randomness and probabilities contribute to the initiation and maintenance of problematic gambling. A small body of empirical research has shown that educational programs about erroneous beliefs in gambling can successfully help change such cognitions. Studies have also shown that the way information is presented to gamblers is significant. Personalized behavioral feedback has been studied in many other areas outside of the gambling area (e.g., cigarette smoking). These examples from related areas suggest that behavioral feedback could also work in promoting responsible gambling. These approaches aim to change a person’s behavior via behavioral feedback. Such approaches are based on both the ‘stages of change’ model and motivational interviewing. Therefore, in order to change people’s gambling behavior using behavioral tracking data, player feedback should also be presented in a tailored and motivational way, and take into account the stages of change model

The effectiveness of using intelligent tutoring systems to increase student achievement

Intelligent Tutoring Systems could be used to provide differentiated instruction. This review examines qualities of Intelligent Tutoring Systems and their impact on student achievement. Thirty peer-reviewed research studies published from 1997 to 2019 were selected for analysis. This review considers how intelligent tutoring systems compare with other methods of instruction, and how an intelligent tutoring system’s on-screen tutor impacts student achievement. Finally, this review considers methods of ITS personalization and how those methods impact student achievement. The reviewed research studies indicated that ITS was more effective than all forms of instruction except small group and individualized instruction. Additionally, on-screen agents in and personalization of Intelligent Tutoring Systems often have a positive impact on student learning. Recommendations for classroom implementation of intelligent tutoring systems and suggestions for future research are discusse

The Effects of Group-Based Context Personalization on Learning Outcomes and Motivation

The rise of online course enrollments in higher education has highlighted the need to establish and validate effective online instructional strategies focused on improving learning outcomes and affective responses towards instruction. One such strategy, group-based context personalization, frames instructional materials within contexts relevant to shared interests among groups of students. This study sought to investigate the effects of group-based context personalization on learning outcomes and motivation towards the instruction when materials were contextualized based on a learner’s academic major. This study employed a true experimental design to explore the effects of group-based context personalization on learning outcomes and motivation for 20 undergraduate fashion merchandising majors enrolled in a four-year institution in the East Central Region of the U.S. Participants were randomly assigned to either the personalization or non-personalization group. The personalization group received an online unit on fair use and copyright contextualized with fashion merchandising examples, while the non-personalization group received the same instructional materials but with general, education-related examples. Both groups completed Keller’s (2010) Instructional Materials Motivation Survey and a posttest that consisted of recall, general transfer, and fashion merchandising-related transfer questions. This study found no significant between-groups differences on learning outcomes or motivation towards the instruction, though the within-groups posttest performance on general education questions did approach significance over performance on fashion merchandising transfer questions. Suggestions for future research and implementation of group-based context personalization instructional strategies are provided

Factors Influencing the Effectiveness of Serious Gaming in the Field of Vocational Orientation

This study investigates the effectiveness of the serious game like2be, which has been developed to support the individual career orientation process of adolescents by broadening their occupational horizon. In this paper, we present results from an intervention study with n = 809 adolescents in Swiss schools at the lower secondary education level. To analyze the extent to which cognitive, affective, and motivational factors are stimulated and what influence they have on expanding knowledge about occupations (measured learning outcome), we applied confirmatory factor analysis, multiple linear regression, and a structural equation model. The results indicate that the stimulation of cognitive processes through serious gaming has a statistically significant impact on learning outcome, although such factors as enjoyment, flow experience, or self-perceived benefits in playing like2be did not significantly impact gain in knowledge about occupations