This article describes research results based on multiple years of experimentation and real-world experience with an adaptive tutoring system named Wayang Outpost. The system represents a novel adaptive learning technology that has shown successful outcomes with thousands of students, and provided teachers with valuable information about students' mathematics performance. We define progress in three areas: improved student cognition, engagement, and affect, and we attribute this improvement to specific components and interventions that are inherently affective, cognitive, and metacognitive in nature. For instance, improved student cognitive outcomes have been measured with pre-post tests and state standardized tests, and achieved due to personalization of content and math fluency training. Improved student engagement was achieved by supporting students' metacognition and motivation via affective learning companions and progress reports, measured via records of student gaming of the system. Student affect within the tutor was measured through sensors and
We provide evidence of persistent gender effects for students using advanced adaptive technology whue leaming mathematics. This technology improves each gender's learning and affective predispositions toward mathematics, but specific features in the software help either female or male students. Gender differences were seen in the students' style of use of the system, motivational goals, affective needs, and cognitive/affective benefits, as well as the impact of affective interventions involving pedagogical agents. We describe 4 studies, with hundreds of students in public schools over several years, which suggest that technology responses should probably be customized to each gender. This article shows differential results before, during, and after the use of adaptive tutoring software, indicating that digital tutoring systems can be an important supplement to mathematics classrooms but that male and female students should be addressed differently. Female students were more receptive than male students to seeking and accepting help provided by the tutoring system and to spending time seeing the hints; thus, they had a consistent general trend to benefit more from it, especially when affective leaming companions were present. In addition, female students expressed positively valenced emotions most often and exhibited more productive behaviors when exposed to female characters; these affective pedagogical agents encouraged effort and perseverance. This was not the case for male students, who had more positive outcomes when no leaming companion was present and their worst affective and cognitive outcomes when the female character was present.Keywords: adaptive leaming environments, gender differences, affective agents, motivation and affect, quantitative analysis Advanced learning technologies have the potential to personalize instruction for students and to meet individual learning needs. To provide such personalized instruction, researchers must first assess factors that influence student learning. A key factor in the domain of mathematics is student gender. To date, much of the educational psychology research on motivation and achievement has been conducted in standard classrooms without technology support. This article provides an analysis of the impact of gender in mathematics learning with instructional software, called Wayang Outpost. Gender differences were investigated by focusing on cognitive and affective factors in leaming. Findings from this research form a theoretical foundation for the design of adaptive computational tutors that deliver personalized support.
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