DEPLOY

You may choose to deploy your study independently by recruiting your own participants or deploy your study automatically at scale with all ASSISTments users depending on the type of study you will conduct.

Two Types of Deployment

E-TRIALS supports three types of studies within ASSISTments. These types are based on your approach to deployment and may alter the type of content we recommend you use. Content manipulation, patterns of assignment, and IRB requirements differ by approach, as highlighted below.

Auto Deploy

  • The study will be placed in the ASSISTments Content Library to be assigned by the teacher.

  • Can be in a Skill Builder or in OER.

  • Take place within student supports (hints, explanations, common wrong-answer feedback).

  • Random assignment occurs at the student level.

  • Content created or modified must fall within the boundaries of normal instructional practice (per WPI IRB).

  • Requires an expedited IRB exemption from your university or institute to work with anonymized data.

  • Requires project pre-registration with OSF.io for data retrieval.

Self Deploy

  • The researcher recruits the subject pool.

  • Take place in any number of problem sets.

  • Can be assigned in a single session or can span multiple days, weeks, or months.

  • Can be studying different student supports (hints, explanations, common wrong answers) or different problem bodies and answers.

  • Researchers work with specific teachers to assign content in specific ways; random assignment still typically occurs at the student level but can occur at the teacher/class/school level if teacher recruitment supports these methods.

  • Requires a formal IRB process from your university or institute.

  • Requires project pre-registration with OSF.io for data retrieval.

LMS Integration for Self-Deploy

ASSISTments can be embedded into most common Learning Management Systems (LMSs) using IMS Global Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) 1.3. IMS Global LTI is a non-proprietary standard that many LMSs have adopted to allow integration with external "learning tools". ASSISTments complies with the highest standards of LTI to offer industry-best security when integrating our system with other platforms. Using 1.3, ASSISTments problem sets can be integrated into Coursera and edX.

If using our Self-Deploy model to release your study to an independently sourced subject pool, users can use ASSISTments directly or access an assignment through an LMS using LTI. LTI integration does not require teachers and students to create accounts in ASSISTments and will link student performance reports to their LMS accounts, pushing basic reports back for teachers or administrators of the LMS course to view and analyze. Additional data may be requested from our data retrieval system.

When using an ASSISTments LTI integration, we recommend connecting to the assignment as a teacher before sharing the link with students or an independently sources subject pool. A teacher account and class will be automatically generated for the assignment, and students or subjects will then be automatically enrolled in that class when they use the link you provide. Connection Specifications and additional instructions particular to use of Moodle, EdX, Schoology, and Canvas are provided below. (Note: The links below are for LTI 1.1 and work for ASSISTments 1.0 not ASSISTments 2.0 and need to be updated. The most update to date docs for LTI 1.3 are here but there are missing screen shots for each platform at this point. )

LTI Connection Specifications

Website URL for Connecting

https://www.assistments.org/connector/connect


Consumer Key

assistments


Shared Secret

secret


This secret may change. In the future, e-mail assistments-help@wpi.edu if the key and secret are rejected.


Custom Parameters

appid=PS# (where 'PS#' is the problem set ID, starting with "PS")


The PS# represents the problem set you have developed for your randomized controlled trial. You must have an ASSISTments account to develop your study materials and access your problem set ID. Students or subjects accessing the assignment through an integration with an LMS DO NOT require ASSISTments accounts.