Increasing Parent Engagement in Student Learning Using an Intelligent Tutoring System

摘要

This study explores the ability of an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) to increase parental engagement in student learning. A parental notification feature was developed for the web-based ASSISTments ITS that allows parents to log into their own accounts and access detailed data about their students' performance. Parents from a local middle school were then invited to create accounts and answer a survey assessing how engaged they felt they were in their students' education. A 60 day exploratory study was run during which messages were sent home to parents regarding what their students were studying in class and how they were performing. After having them take a post-survey, it was found that parents fell significantly more engaged in their students' education. Additionally, the messages increased how frequently parents logged in to check reports on their students' performance data using the ASSISTments system. Qualitative feedback from both parents and teachers was very positive.