Do College Students Learn Math the Same Way as Middle School Students? On the Transferability of Findings on Within-Problem Supports in Intelligent Tutoring Systems

A widely used minimum criterion for intelligent tutoring system (ITS) status is that the system provides within-problem support. The ITS literature abounds with comparisons of supports, but investigations on the transferability of findings, particularly between education levels, are scant. There are, however, significant impetuses to investigate the transferability of these findings. First, ITSs are used throughout K-16, and findings from past studies naturally serve as guideposts for subsequent ITS developments and research. If findings do not transfer, these guideposts may be illusory. Furthermore, learners change over time, and the efficacy of ITS supports that do not adapt to these changes may vary. This study conceptually replicates investigations conducted at the middle school level by assigning 330 college students in introductory mathematics courses homework that have the same within-problem support formats. The support formats are either text hints, text explanations, or video explanations. We compare the efficacy of these support for-mats within the college student sample and between college student and middle school student samples. Our findings at the college level indicate that on-demand within-problem explanations displayed as text rather than videos lead to higher next problem correctness and that both outperform text hints. Our results differ from those in the literature using middle school student samples and therefore buttress the assertion that studies investigating the transferability of findings between education levels are necessary.