Search results for "Randomized experiment"
showing 3 items of 3 documents
Emulating Human Supervision in an Intelligent Tutoring System for Arithmetical Problem Solving
2014
This paper presents an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) for the learning of arithmetical problem solving. This is based on an analysis of a) the cognitive processes that take place during problem solving; and b) the usual tasks performed by a human when supervising a student in a one-to-one tutoring situation. The ITS is able to identify the solving strategy that the student is following and offer adaptive feedback that takes into account both the problem's constraints and the decisions previously made by the user. An observational study shows the ITS's accuracy at emulating expert human supervision, and a randomized experiment reveals that the ITS significantly improves students' learning…
Gender Peer Effects in University: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment
2010
Recent studies for primary and secondary education find positive effects of the share of girls in the classroom on achievement of boys and girls. This study examines whether these results can be extrapolated to post-secondary education. We conduct an experiment in which the shares of girls in workgroups for first year students in economics and business are manipulated and students are randomly assigned to these groups. Boys tend to postpone their dropout decision when surrounded by more girls, and there is also a modest reduction in early absenteeism. On the other hand, boys perform worse on courses with high math content when assigned to a group with many girls. Overall, however, we fail t…
Managing for Results in Primary Education: Results of a Randomized Trial in Madagascar
2012
International audience; Using information from a randomized experiment carried out over the course of two school years in Madagascar, this paper evaluates the impact of specific actions designed to streamline and tighten the work processes of public primary school directors. The results show that interventions at the school level, reinforced by interventions at the district and subdistrict levels, succeeded overall in changing school heads' behavior toward better management. However, the average impact hides important heterogeneity. The impact of the intervention was significantly larger among school heads who had a nonpermanent contract and among school principals who were responsible for …