Promising Long Term Effects of ASSISTments Online Math Homework Support

Abstract

Math performance continues to be an important focus for improvement. Many districts adopted educational technology programs to support student learning and teacher instruction. The ASSISTments program provides feedback to students as they solve homework problems and automatically prepares reports for teachers about student performance on daily assignments. During the 2018–19 and 2019–20 school years, WestEd led a large-scale randomized controlled trial to replicate the effects of ASSISTments in 63 schools in North Carolina in the US. 32 treatment schools implemented ASSISTments in 7th-grade math classrooms. Recently, we conducted a follow-up analysis to measure the long-term effects of ASSISTments on student performance one year after the intervention, when the students were in 8th grade. The initial results suggested that implementing ASSISTments in 7th grade improved students’ performance in 8th grade and minority students benefited more from the intervention.