About

From TeacherWiki

What is ASSISTments?

ASSISTments is a non-profit research project used by hundreds of teachers. ASSISTments is a free web-based platform, hosted by WPI, that allows teachers to write individual ASSISTments (composed of questions and associated hints, solutions, web-based videos, etc.) The word “ASSISTments” blends tutoring “assistance” with “assessment” reporting to teachers. It supports all subjects (i.e., Math, English, etc.) and due to federal grants, has a huge repository of math content. ASSISTments is not just a math tutoring system. It's an ecosystem of researchers, schools, parents, funders, and state partners, working together to help students. Each of the partners gets something out of it and each contributes something.

"The combination of WPI’s ASSISTments and the collaborative relationships with numerous schools and teachers provides an incredible testbed for designing and evaluating...instructional materials. There is no place else in the country where such a capability exists."

-James Pellegrino, National Academy of Education

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The Bigger Vision of the ASSISTments as TestBed

ASSISTments is not just a service that schools like but a scientific instrument shared by researchers from over a dozen universities trying to advance what we understand about the world. Read more about the ASSISTments Research TestBed here.

What is the purpose for ASSISTments?

Arne Duncan (U.S. Secretary of Education) urged schools and teachers to use formative assessment information to inform their classroom instruction. The dilemma is that every minute spent testing is a minute taken away from instruction. ASSISTments solves this problem by tutoring students on items they get wrong, thus providing integrated assisting of students while they are being assessed. Teachers can use this detailed assessment data to adjust their classroom instruction and pacing.

How is it used?

Teachers make accounts at their school, then students make an account and join the teachers' class. Teachers assign problem sets to students for the students to work on. When the students do the problem sets they get feedback and the teachers gets instant reports on how well they are doing, with percent correct per student and problem number as well as common wrong answers.

Teachers can use content certified by WPI or can use the Build feature to construct their own problem sets.

Since the system is so simple to use the teachers have been able to use it in many ways - practice, open response essays, homework, classwork, and more.

Go to User Experiences to hear from the teachers themselves.

Learn More About ASSISTments

Read about the history of ASSISTments with this timeline of how ASSISTments came to be (PDF).

The list of people that work on ASSISTments is huge! Go here to find out who we are.

You can go to our Youtube Channel also download the one-page fact sheet about ASSISTments.

ASSISTments National Advisory Council

Read about who is on the ASSISTments National Advisory Council.