Developing Fine-Grained Transfer Models in the ASSISTment System

In Massachusetts, similar to many states, teachers are being asked to use state mandated assessments in a data-driven manner to help their students meet state standards. However, teachers want feedback on student performance much more often than once a year and they also want better feedback than they currently receive. For instance, while the number of Mathematics skills and concepts that a student needs to acquire is on the order of hundreds, the feedback on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) test to principals, teachers, parents, and students is broken down into only 5 mathematical reporting categories: Algebra, Number Sense, Geometry, Data Analysis and Measurement. In this article, we describe our attempt to create a fine-grained transfer model for 8th grade math based on the skills needed to take the Math MCAS exam and how we use this model in a web-based intelligent tutoring system called the ASSISTment system.