When middle school math teachers completed an online professional development program that uses artificial intelligence to improve their math knowledge and teaching skills, their students’ math performance improved.
My colleagues and I developed this online professional development program, which relies on a virtual facilitator that can – among other things – present problems to the teacher around teaching math and provide feedback on the teacher’s answers.
Our goal was to enhance teachers’ mastery of knowledge and skills required to teach math effectively. These include understanding why the mathematical rules and procedures taught in school work. The program also focuses on common struggles students have as they learn a particular math concept, and how to use instructional tools and strategies to help them overcome these struggles.
We then conducted an experiment in which 53 middle school math teachers were randomly assigned to either this AI-based professional development or no additional training. On average, teachers spent 11 hours to complete the program. We then gave 1,727 of their students a math test. While students of these two groups of teachers started off with no difference in their math performance, the students taught by teachers who completed the program increased their mathematics performance by 0.18 of a standard deviation more on average. This is a statistically significant gain that is equal to the average math performance difference between sixth and seventh graders in the study.
Our project was funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education.
When middle school math teachers completed an online professional development program that uses artificial intelligence to improve their math knowledge and teaching skills, their students’ math performance improved.
My colleagues and I developed this online professional development program, which relies on a virtual facilitator that can – among other things – present problems to the teacher around teaching math and provide feedback on the teacher’s answers.
Our goal was to enhance teachers’ mastery of knowledge and skills required to teach math effectively. These include understanding why the mathematical rules and procedures taught in school work. The program also focuses on common struggles students have as they learn a particular math concept, and how to use instructional tools and strategies to help them overcome these struggles.
We then conducted an experiment in which 53 middle school math teachers were randomly assigned to either this AI-based professional development or no additional training. On average, teachers spent 11 hours to complete the program. We then gave 1,727 of their students a math test. While students of these two groups of teachers started off with no difference in their math performance, the students taught by teachers who completed the program increased their mathematics performance by 0.18 of a standard deviation more on average. This is a statistically significant gain that is equal to the average math performance difference between sixth and seventh graders in the study.
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