Grant to spur tutoring software for math fundamentals
Computer scientists Beverly Woolf, Ivon Arroyo and colleagues have won a $250,000 award from EDUCAUSE and the Gates Foundation to support development of their mathematics fundamentals tutoring software. The goal is to improve college readiness and completion.
Woolf's research group is among 29 recipients who will share a total $10.64 million announced today by EDUCAUSE and its Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC), a multi-year, collaborative initiative to identify and accelerate growth of effective education technology that can help improve United States college readiness and completion, especially among low-income students. The UMass Amherst computer scientists were selected from among more than 600 groups competing for the awards.
Woolf, Arroyo and others have been working for several years to create an intelligent and emotionally perceptive math tutoring software called "Wayang Outpost." Via computer, it provides multimedia advice, animated characters and new strategies for tackling challenging problems and has been shown to improve student performance on standardized test scores by an average 10 percent. That's a critical difference for low-achieving and special needs students who often struggle to pass.
Wayang Outpost has now been used by thousands of students worldwide, including many classes in Greenfield and Springfield elementary schools. It's designed to improve students' relationship with math early, which can be important to later career choices, Woolf explains. "Once you close off math, you close off most of the sciences as well. So to prevent that, our program assigns an individual virtual aide to each student."
The computer science researcher says the focus of her new NLGC-supported project will be to support deeper learning in mathematics through the use of Wayang and its intelligent tutor. The target audience is high-enrollment, low-success, entry-level developmental mathematics courses in community colleges and public four-year schools where the goal is to improve course and college completion and persistence. A secondary focus is to use real-time outcome data for students, instructors and advisors to improve student success.
Ira Fuchs, NLCG executive director, saluted today's grant winners, saying, "These programs represent a diverse range of approaches and show how the postsecondary system is adapting to give students the tools they need to achieve educational success."
NGLC collaborating organizations supporting today's awards include the League for Innovation in the Community College, the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, the Council of Chief State School Officers. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation helped design and fund the NGLC.
More Information
Next Generation Learning Challenge
April 11, 2011.
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