Hints: Is It Better to Give or Wait to Be Asked?

Leena Razzaq and Neil T. HeffernanVenu Babu Thati 2541458Hints: Is It Better to Give or Wait to Be Asked?

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1OutlineMotivation

Tutoring System(ASSISTment system)

Methodology with example

Result and conclusion

Future work

22Motivation3Hints-on-demand and proactive hints

Motivation4

Proactive hintsI made errorsMotivation5

Hints on demandI want a hintMotivation6

Un productive help seekers

I am confusedASSISTment system7Mission To improve education through the scientific research while not compromising on student learning time Vision In classrooms every where, continuously improve teaching and learning through the use of validated educational research finding and applied technology

The ASSISTment System8Assist students for the MCAS test

Used by middle and high-school teachers

More then 3000 students and 50 teachers use the system

Web based version

ASSITment system example9Teachers receive immediate feedback on the students work

Methodology10Here hints plays a major role

Each hint sequence ends with a bottom-out hint

Hints are pertinent to the task

Mostly hint sequence of 3-5 hints

Experiment Design 11There were two conditions in this case 1. Hints on demand 2. Proactive hints

In this experiment students need to work on two topics 1. Symbolization(for both conditions) 2. Slope/intercept(for both conditions)

Participants1240 male and 32 female about the age 12-14

Hints-on-demand Procedure13

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Proactive hints procedure15

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MCAS test18Here students were presented with 4 problems in each topic.

First they will conduct pretest and post-test with 4 problems

Gain from pre test to post-test was used to measure the learning ability

Symbolization vs slope/intercept19From the test the average gain for symbolization problem set was 12%

Gain for the slope/intercept problem set was 4%

61 students completed the both conditions

After finishing the MCAS test the median score on the test was 75%

Gain values20MCAS scores are used to classify students as 1. High math ability 2. Low math ability

Students ability21From the test the repeated measures showed that students learned significantly more from hints on demand

Approximately students with high math ability ask for (mean = 5.5 hints) very few hints

Students with low math ability ask for (mean = 11 hints) large no. of hintsOverall Test Result22The final result of the analysis with respect to the two conditions

Resultant graph23

Resultant graph24

Conclusion25We have seen the test for comparing the hint on demand to proactive hint in tutoring system

We found that middle school students working better with hints on demand then proactive hints with the effect size of 0.35

Interestingly students who tended to ask more hints hints on demand is better

Who ask very few doubts it does not make any difference two conditions

Future work26Students who participated in the test are familiar with the hints on demand

Proactive hints are unfamiliar and confusing the students

Lack of time to know clearly about proactive hints

For future experiment they decided to do it for a long time with more no. of students27

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