PALS is a large-scale, randomized control trial (RCT) study of the MathSpring learning tool. It is funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, which is part of the U.S. Department of Education. Sixth grade teachers across New England will participate in the study by using MathSpring in their classrooms and supporting researchers in their evaluation of the tool's efficacy. Two cohorts of 5th and 6th grade students will use the program across two school years.
The goal of this rigorous study is to understand the impact on teacher practice and student achievement of using MathSpring for 6th-grade math classes. The U.S. Department of Education is funding this study in New England and will bring over one million dollars into New England – for example, to pay for teacher professional development.
Immediate Use Group
Delayed Use Group
Research questions include:
MathSpring is a free, online environment that teachers use to provide supplementary learning and practice activities for students’ mathematics skills. It does not replace a teacher’s curriculum – instead, teachers integrate their desired content into the system. The learning environment contains practice problems that are aligned to students’ specific needs and the Common Core Standards. It has been used by more than 7,000 students and over 500 teachers and addresses 214 Common Core standards/topics for Grades 5–12, with problem-solving hints for 900 individual mathematics problems including those written in Spanish.
One of MathSpring’s key features is an affect-aware system that is designed to recognize emotions like boredom, frustration, and engagement. Like a human tutor, it supports engagement and structured practice required for improved student learning and problem solving.
For teachers, the environment provides immediate feedback about student progress and class behavior. It visualizes students’ skill level and measures their effort (e.g., skip problem, solve with hints, not read the problem) rather than simply measuring correctness. The Dashboard provides data analytics tools that measure students’ expertise, competence, and effort, and help personalize teaching. It estimates student learning overall, progress per individual skill over time, and assessments aggregated by class along with students’ fine-grained interactions with the system (e.g., time to attempt an answer, amount of helps requested, etc.).