The Future of Assessment in STEM Lecture Series
Thursday, February 29th, 2024
12:30-2:00pm
Held Virtually via Zoom (link below)
Innovations in assessment technology to improve student engagement and learning outcomes in introductory STEM courses using Edfinity
Historically, commercial textbook publishers have controlled access to assessment platforms by bundling them with expensive textbooks. This has restricted educator freedom, as the choice of textbook automatically determines the assessment platform, rather than allowing educators to select a platform best suited to their students' needs. However, innovations in technology, the explosion of Open Educational Resources, and Artificial Intelligence have led to the emergence of 'textbook-independent' platforms that empower educators to pair them with any instructional content of their choice. Edfinity, an NSF-supported assessment platform, has been shown to improve student engagement and learning outcomes through research-backed innovations:
Adaptive Learning: Edfinity’s adaptive learning technology assesses each student’s strengths and weaknesses and precisely fills learning gaps with personalized, just-in-time remediation and concept reviews.
Conversational Tutor: Edfinity’s AI-powered tutor (“Anna”) provides personalized, Socratic instructional support to help students solve problems by offering tailored hints and feedback without giving away answers.
Step-by-Step Grading: Edfinity allows students to show their intermediate steps/work on a question, provides them with personalized feedback based on the work shown, and auto-grades their work.
“Zero-code” Problem Authoring: Historically, authoring algorithmic problems has required programming skills. Edfinity’s AI-powered “Alice” tool auto-generates algorithmic problems in the WeBWorK format using a picture or a natural language description of a problem.
Edfinity is used at over 400 institutions, including large institutions such as Clemson University, Indiana University, the University of California system, UNC-Chapel Hill, and Arizona State University.
Presenter Information
Shivram Venkatasubramaniam
Member of the Product Team at Edfinity.
Sid Grover
Member of the product team at Edfinity. He graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Mathematical and Computational Science.
The Lecture Series is presented by the Department of Mathematical Sciences and the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cincinnati. It is sponsored by the Office of the Provost for the Strategic Collaborative Faculty Team Project Fund.