Cristina Heffernan's Contact Details

Cristina Heffernan's Company Details

The ASSISTments Foundation

Worcester, Massachusetts, United States • 8 Employees
Education Management

The ASSISTments Foundation is an entity that promotes the use of ASSISTments by teachers and researchers across the country. Cristina and Dr. Neil Heffernan are the husband and wife team at Worcester Polytechnic Institute who created ASSISTments, one of the most highly regarded education platforms in the country. \\This year, officials at the US Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse declared the tool to be one of a handful of proven interventions in mathematics. Based on these impressive research results and with the support from multi-million dollar philanthropic investments, WPI is spinning off this non-profit 501(c)(3). \\Over the course of its tenure, ASSISTments has received $25 million in federal and philanthropic funding. Like many non-profit research organizations such as AIR, EDC and WestEd, our business model is based on receiving federal and philanthropic funding to carry out research. Last year 1,000 teachers across the U.S. used ASSISTments, and their students solved 12 million math problems.\ \Our vision at ASSISTments is to do research to improve education for all students. Dr. Heffernan and the ASSISTments team currently have a 10+ funded projects that Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and the foundation will be working on together. In this context we think of ASSISTments as a shared scientific instrument. Our Testbed allows researchers to study human learning at a much lower cost than was previously possible.\ \ASSISTments is completely free. ASSISTments has begun to crowdsource hints and explanations for all the commonly used questions in middle school mathematics, in particular those offered as Open Educational Resources (OER). Teachers would be reluctant to contribute their work if they thought we were selling ASSISTments. By keeping ASSISTments free, we will be able to impact as many teachers and students as possible! ----- The Assistments Platform assists students in learning while it gives teachers assessMENT of their students' progress.