Getting Parents Involved in Learning: Does parent notification of student performance increase learning?

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Getting Parents Involved in Learning Does
parent notification of student performance
increase learning? Zach Broderick, Joseph
Politz, Stephen Giguere, Ravi Singh, Mihai
Luca Advisor Neil Heffernan
Goal
1.a RIGHT The process is started when a student
signs up for ASSISTment and specifies a parent or
legal guardians email. That email is reported to
the teacher, who may choose to send the parent an
account creation email.
1.b LEFT Upon receiving the account creation
email, the parent will follow a link to the
ASSISTment website and create a parent account
that is automatically linked to their child(ren).
The parent can log on whenever they please and
monitor their students performance.
Problem Communication between parents and their
child/childs teacher is often poor. Solution
Use ASSISTment to foster this communication.
Summary

• Parents are given their own ASSISTment accounts
  linked to their childrens accounts that they can
  log into and monitor performance and learning
• Daily, detailed item reports of a students
  activity can be viewed at any time, containing
  what the student worked on, what problems they
  got wrong, and what skills they need to learn
• Parents are notified via e-mail of important
  activity
• Teachers can send private and class-wide messages
  to parents linked to specific problem sets

2. RIGHT Once logged into their account, the
parent is presented with a summary view of their
childrens schooling what assignments are due,
messages from the teacher to their student and/or
the class, and daily activity reports documenting
everything their student worked on that day and
how they performed.
3.b ABOVE The parent will then see the message
when he or she logs in to his or her account. The
parent can then easily navigate to the problem
set in question by following the attached link.
Research Goals

• Does increasing parent communication with their
  child and their childs teacher regarding his or
  her education increase student learning?

4.a RIGHT A parent can click on a students
daily report and view a list of all the problem
sets done that day, as well as the individual
questions and whether he or she got them correct,
what he or she answered, and more.
Current Progress
3.a BELOW When reviewing his or her students
performance on a particular problem set, a
teacher can quickly send generic or
individualized private comments to the parents
pertaining to their childs performance on that
problem set.

• Parent notification is nearing completion of the
  development phase and trial testing will begin
  this fall.

Funding/People

• The Parent Notification project is funded by a 2
  million dollar grant from the Department of
  Education. Principal Investigators Neil Heffernan
  at WPI collaborating Kenneth Koedinger at
  Carnegie Mellon.
• Zach Broderick is a PIMSE fellow funded by a 2
  million dollar grant as part of the NSFs GK12
  program, which places graduate students in middle
  schools for 10 hours a week to spread their
  scientific expertise to students and teachers.
• Contact Professor Neil T. Heffernan (508)
  831-5569, nth_at_wpi.edu

4.b LEFT The childs teacher can also see the
daily reports, as well as whether or not the
childs parent has viewed them, giving him or her
a way to measure parent engagement with the
students learning.