I-Corps: Conceptual Model-based Math Intelligent Tutors

Purdue University, West Lafayette IN

Investigators

Abstract

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to explore the product-market fit for a conceptual model-based math intelligent tutors (COMMIT) for teaching students with learning disabilities or difficulties in mathematics. The technology will help overcome a current impediment for these students' success in mathematics, the shortage of response to intervention curriculum materials and service providers. The COMMIT products will potentially address a practical issue in today's inclusive elementary classrooms: the need to deliver individualized and effective intervention programs to those students who are not responsive to or are struggling with mathematics content in their regular classrooms. The COMMIT products will also promote the implementation of evidence-based practice and translation of research into practice. Because the COMMITs emphasize a conceptual model-based problem solving approach that orients students' attention to deep problem structure, it is expected that this program can also be used to improve mathematical learning of elementary students more broadly. This I-Corps project, conceptual model-based math intelligent tutors (COMMIT), represents a shift from traditional mathematics problem-solving instruction, which focuses on the choice of operation for solution, to a model-based problem-solving approach that emphasizes an understanding and representation of mathematical relations in algebraic equations and therefore facilitates generalized problem solving skills. The COMMITs incorporate a constructivist view of mathematics learning so that the reasoning behind mathematics is explicit to the students. In other words, students will be able to make sense of what they are doing with mathematical models and abstract symbols. The COMMIT project will demonstrate how intelligent tutors will work with teachers in synergy and provide personalized curriculum recommendations that are based on a dynamic assessment of individual student's learning profile. COMMITs help build fundamental mathematical ideas that are essential to enabling struggling students to understand mathematics at a conceptual or abstract level.