The ASSISTments Ecosystem: Building a Platform that Brings Scientists and Teachers Together for Minimally Invasive Research on Human Learning and Teaching
The ASSISTments Ecosystem: Building a Platform that Brings Scientists and Teachers Together for Minimally Invasive Research on Human Learning and Teaching
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DOI：
10.1007/s40593-014-0024-x
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发表时间：
2014-12-01
影响因子：
4.9
通讯作者：
Heffernan, Cristina Lindquist
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Heffernan, Neil T.;Heffernan, Cristina Lindquist
ASSISTments项目是一个由数百名教师、一个平台和研究人员共同工作的生态系统。发展专业人员帮助培训教师，并让教师参与学习。该平台和这些教师仅仅通过使用教师选择的内容来帮助研究人员(有时是明确的，有时是含蓄的)。该平台由伍斯特理工学院主办，允许教师撰写个人ASSIST(由带答案的问题和相关提示、解决方案、基于网络的视频等组成)。或者使用预先构建的ASSISTments，将它们捆绑在一个问题集中，并将它们分配给学生。该系统在学生工作时立即向他们提供反馈，并向教师提供任何作业的学生级别的数据。“ASSISTments”一词将辅导“协助”与向教师和学生汇报“评估”混为一谈。虽然最初专注于数学，但该平台现在包含了许多其他学科的内容(例如，科学、英语、统计学等)。然而，由于数学内容库很大，所以大多数是数学教师使用的。上个学年(2013-2014学年)，超过5万名学生使用了ASSISTments，而且在过去的8年里，这个数字每年都在翻一番。该平台允许任何用户，主要是研究人员，在内容中创建随机对照试验，这帮助我们在超过18项已发表和同等数量的未发表研究中使用了该工具。该系统收集的数据还被用于几十种同行评议的数据挖掘出版物。本文不打算审查这些出版物，而是分享ASSISTments为什么成功，以及在此过程中吸取了哪些经验教训。学到的第一课是建立一个学习科学的平台，而不是一个专注于数学主题的产品。也就是说，ASSISTments是一种工具，而不是一门课程。学到的第二课是这样一句格言：“让老师负责，而不是让电脑负责。”第二节课是关于建立一个灵活的系统，允许教师在课堂例行公事中使用工具。一旦教师使用了这个工具，他们就更有可能想要参与研究性研究。这些经验来自于关于平台支持和不支持什么的设计决策。最后，将提出未来的目标。
The ASSISTments project is an ecosystem of a few hundred teachers, a platform, and researchers working together. Development professionals help train teachers and get teachers to participate in studies. The platform and these teachers help researchers (sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly) simply by using content the teacher selects. The platform, hosted by Worcester Polytechnic Institute, allows teachers to write individual ASSISTments (composed of questions with answers and associated hints, solutions, web-based videos, etc.) or to use pre-built ASSISTments, bundle them together in a problem set, and assign these to students. The system gives immediate feedback to students while they are working and provides student-level data to teachers on any assignment. The word "ASSISTments" blends tutoring "assistance" with "assessment" reporting to teachers and students. While originally focused on mathematics, the platform now has content from many other subjects (e.g., science, English, Statistics, etc.). Due to the large library of mathematics content, however, it is mostly used by math teachers. Over 50,000 students used ASSISTments last school year (2013-4) and this number has been doubling each year for the last 8 years. The platform allows any user, mostly researchers, to create randomized controlled trials in the content, which has helped us use the tool in over 18 published and an equal number of unpublished studies. The data collected by the system has also been used in a few dozen peer-reviewed data mining publications. This paper will not seek to review these publications, but instead we will share why ASSISTments has been successful and what lessons were learned along the way. The first lesson learned was to build a platform for learning sciences, not a product that focused on a math topic. That is, ASSISTments is a tool, not a curriculum. A second lesson learned is expressed by the mantra "Put the teacher in charge, not the computer." This second lesson is about building a flexible system that allows teachers to use the tool in concert with the classroom routine. Once teachers are using the tool they are more likely to want to participate in research studies. These lessons were born from the design decisions about what the platform supports and does not support. In conclusion, goals for the future will be presented.