Science and Mathematics Education Commons^™

Online Mathematics Homework Increases Student Achievement, Jeremy Roschelle, Mingyu Feng, Robert F. Murphy, Craig A. Mason

STEM Faculty Scholarship

In a randomized field trial with 2,850 seventh-grade mathematics students, we evaluated whether an educational technology intervention increased mathematics learning. Assigning homework is common yet sometimes controversial. Building on prior research on formative assessment and adaptive teaching, we predicted that combining an online homework tool with teacher training could increase learning. The online tool ASSISTments (a) provides timely feedback and hints to students as they do homework and (b) gives teachers timely, organized information about students’ work. To test this prediction, we analyzed data from 43 schools that participated in a random assignment experiment in Maine, a state that provides …

Everyday Life Is Full Of 'Science Moments' To Teach And Share With Children, Mary Bird, Herman Weller

STEM Faculty Scholarship

The routine business of getting back to school is the easy part. It's much more challenging to figure out how to support children's efforts to learn more about the world and their place in it, and to hone the new skills they are acquiring daily. Even if you have felt comfortable reading with your child or helping with math homework in the past, chances are that you, like the vast majority of American parents, feel stymied when it comes to science.

So what can you do to broaden and deepen your child's learning of science? A lot, and you don't …