Proof Points: Crowdsourcing math homework help

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By Jill Barshay

I’ve written a lot about how ed tech inventions have tended not to pass rigorous tests for improving student achievement. Neil Heffernan, an academic ed tech developer at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, has created one of the few websites that’s done well in a randomized controlled trial. It’s a free homework website called ASSISTments where teachers can upload their practice math problems. His latest invention is a crowdsourcing system to distribute helpful homework hints written by real classroom teachers -- a sign that ed tech developers are hunting for ways to allow teachers’ ideas rise to the top.

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Key Findings

In early trials of the crowdsourcing system, students who had access to teachers’ hints answered the next problem correctly on their own without any support 58 percent of the time. In comparison, students who did not have access to the hints and were only able to see the answer to the math problem got the next problem correct 54 percent of the time. The difference wasn’t a big one but it was statistically significant.
A crowdsourced system like this would depend on different teachers wanting to assign the same homework problems to their students.

Teacher Takeaway

“Teachers [can] stop wasting their time writing and rewriting explanations for the Pythagorean theorem,” said Heffernan.
Computerized motivational messages from a random teacher, Heffernan suspects, wouldn’t be as effective.

Lit Review

Heffernan, Neil T. and Patikorn, Thanaporn “Effectiveness of Crowd-Sourcing On-Demand Assistance from Teachers in Online Learning Platforms,” forthcoming L@S ’20, August 12–14, 2020, Virtual Event, USA.
Roschelle, J., Feng, M., Murphy, R. F., & Mason, C. A. (2016). Online Mathematics Homework Increases Student Achievement. AERA Open.