Reaching More Students: A Web-based Intelligent Tutoring System with support for Offline Access

Abstract

ASSISTments is a web-based intelligent tutoring system that can provide students with immediate feedback when they are doing math homework. Until now, ASSISTments required internet access in order to do nightly homework. Without ASSISTments, students do their work on paper and are not told if they are correct or given help for wrong answers until the next morning at best. We\u27ve developed a component that supports \u27offline-mode\u27, enabling students without internet access at home to still receive immediate feedback on their responses. Students with laptops download their assignments at school, and then run ASSISTments at home in offline mode, utilizing the browser\u27s application cache and Web Storage API. To evaluate the benefit of having the offline feature, we ran a randomized controlled study that tests the effect of immediate feedback on student learning. Intuition would suggest that providing a student with tutoring and feedback immediately after they submit an answer would lead to better understanding of the material than having them wait until the next day. The results of the study confirmed our hypothesis, and validated the need for \u27offline mode.\u2

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