Communications of the ACM
Homework Program Catches on in Metrowest
Neil Heffernan, shown here with a student, invented a program called ASSISTments that helps students master homework in math, science, English and other subjects.
Credit: Courtesy of MetroWest Daily News
Hundreds of teachers are using the ASSISTments educational software, developed by a computer science teacher in Massachusetts, and a series of recent grants could soon make the free program available to teachers and students across the United States.
ASSISTments helps students master their homework in math, science, English, and other subjects by providing hints on questions they initially get wrong. The system also helps teachers by keeping track of those problematic questions so they will know what to work on the next day in class.
Using a series of grants from the U.S. Department of Education and the National Science Foundation, Neil Heffernan, who developed ASSISTments, has continued to expand the program. The system recently reached 100,000 unique questions.
Heffernan, now a computer science professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, plans to continue to expand ASSISTments' reach, and recently received a $500,000 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to double the number of students using the program, with a long-term target of one million users by 2016.
From MetroWest Daily News (MA)
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