The Customized Mathematic Instruction Supported by an Intelligent Tutoring System and Its Effect During the COVID-19 Epidemic

To cope with the covid-19 epidemic challenge for school education, many researchers have conducted studies from different point of views. However, it is hard to find empirical study to examine the online learning’s effect on school pupils’ performance represented by regular exams. This study attempts to fill in this research gap. An intelligent tutoring system, Lexue 100 was utilized in mathematics online instruction during the COVID-19 epidemic outbreak time in a junior high school in Shandong Province China. Supported by this system, the teacher provided the students with differentiated assignments including class assignment, group assignment and individual assignment, as well as error sets. Those assignments could be completed before the class, in the class or after the class. A quasi-experiment was conducted to compare the effect of this online learning supported by the individualized assignment with that of uniform assignment to all students. The treatment group and control group had the statistically not significant difference in the regular school exams before the experiment as the pretest. At the end of the experiment, the treatment group performed better than the control group in the mid-term test as the posttest, reaching a statistically significant advantage 6.83% (p < 0.01) and an effect size 0.381. The individualized homework contributed to the performance improvement. Implications for online learning design and limitations are discussed.