Blended Learning

U Memphis Explores Support for Blended Learning Environments

• By Joshua Bolkan
• 11/17/16

The University of Memphis is teaming with a private partner to explore how students can best thrive in a blended learning environment with access to both teachers and automated instruction.

The university has partnered with Carnegie Learning and is studying more than 19,000 tutorial records of more than 3,300 student and tutor dialogs from tutor.com. The students being studied were taking a developmental math course using Carnegie Learning's MATHia platform.

Presented at the International Conference on Educational Data Mining, the results suggested that students who were struggling with or less prepared for their coursework were more likely to use the tutoring service. Students who used a tutoring service were also more likely to complete the course, regardless of course preparation.

"The researchers are continuing to examine the tutorial dialogs and interactions within MATHia so they can better understand the support that might be given to tutors and other instructors to better assist students in learning mathematics with adaptive software," according to a news release.