When More Intelligent Tutoring in the Form of Buggy Messages Does not Help

This paper reports on the null results from two large scale randomized controlled trials that were run in the ASSISTments online tutoring system. Both studies attempted to use reactive buggy messages to help students learn; one in the form of short 20–30 second videos and another in the form of large color-coded text. Bug messages were supplied for common wrong answers for one-step equation problems in both studies. Despite the large amount of prior research done on error analysis, both interventions using the predicted common wrong answers were unsuccessful at helping students.