Disseminate

We use the word Disseminate to describe the phase where the study is over and the researcher can get their data, analyze it, and publish the work. Make sure to follow our Terms of Use with regard to data anonymity, open science, and citing ASSISTments

Terms of Use

As you Develop and Deploy your study it is important to remember that WPI's IRB requires all interventions created within ASSISTments (via E-TRIALS) and/or deployed to ASSISTments users fall within the boundaries of normal instructional practice. E-TRIALS use also requires that researchers receive - in the very least - an IRB exemption from their university or institution to access anonymized data. If adding survey questions that likely extend beyond the bounds of normal instructional practice in mathematics, additional IRB Requirements may be imposed. 

However, E-TRIALS also requires that users agree to Terms of Use that encompass the retrieval, analysis, and publication of study materials falling within dissemination of findings. These Terms are meant to protect teacher and student users of ASSISTments, enforce open science policies, and outline proper citation of ASSISTments and E-TRIALS as tools for scientific research in online learning. 

Data Requests

Please contact etrials@assistments.org to request your data. You may use this Data Dictionary to learn about your data. If you find variables are left undefined, please contact etrials@assistments.org for more information. 

Data Files

You can get a data overview, a glossary, and example data on this data files webpage.

OSF Project Page

Once you have requested anonymized data by contacting etrials@assistments.org, we suggest that - if you haven't already - you create a project page for your research with the Open Science Foundation (OSF). We support the OSF's emphasis on open science and data transparency and their project pages offer a way to preregister your work and store data publicly for citation. The OSF even makes it easy to register a free DOI for your project page(s), making citation clean and stable, indefinitely. An E-TRIALS team member can work with you to host this data on your OSF project page if you need assistance.

Publication

Once you've reached the point where you want to publish your findings, first let us offer our congratulations! Then, let us remind you to consult our Terms of Use with regard to publication and proper citation of the data you have received from ASSISTments. 

We also remind you that we support open science and data transparency and urge you to do so as well. You can cite data from our new system by creating an OSF project page for your work and hosting the data you receive as part of a public project or registration. 

If you wish to cite ASSISTments as a tool for research, we suggest using any of the following works: 

If you would like to acknowledge the grant funding that has made our work to build E-TRIALS and its predecessors possible, the following grants have supported research in ASSISTments:

NSF 1440753: SI2-SSE&SSI. "Adding Research Accounts to the ASSISTments Platform: Helping Researchers Do Randomized Controlled Studies with Thousands of Students." $500,000. 2014 - 2016.

NSF 1724889: CIF21 DIBBs: "PD: Enhancing and Personalizing Educational Resources through Tools for Experimentation." PIs Heffernan (WPI) & Korinn Ostrow (WPI). $544,644. 2017-2020.

Schmidt Futures 995: E-TRIALS. $2,000,000. 2019 - 2021.

NSF 1931523: Collaborative Research:  CyberInfrastructure for Shared Algorithmic and Experimental Research in Online Learning. In collaboration with UPenn's Ryan Baker. $3,500,000 (WPI portion = $1,800,000). 2019 - 2024.