A Web-based Authoring Tool for Intelligent Tutors: Blending Assessment and Instructional Assistance

Middle school mathematics teachers are often forced to choose between assisting students’ development and assessing students’ abilities because of limited classroom time available. To help teachers make better use of their time, a web-based system, called the Assistment system, was created to integrate assistance and assessment by offering instruction to students while providing a more detailed evaluation of their abilities to the teacher than is possible under current approaches. An initial version of the Assistment system was created and used in May, 2004 with approximately 200 students and over 1000 students currently use it once every two weeks. The hypothesis is that Assistments can assist students while also assessing them. This chapter describes the Assistment system and some preliminary results.