Personalized learning that makes practice fun

An educational technology company doing just that is IXL. One of the most popular learning websites in the world, IXL offers a personalized learning experience for grades K–12 in math, language arts, science, and social studies. The program helps students learn and practice at their own pace by automatically adjusting questions in difficulty based on their individual strengths and weaknesses. IXL makes practice feel like play with fun, interactive problem types as well as awards and certificates to motivate students. In the U.S. alone, 1 in 10 students use IXL at school, at home, or both—and research shows that all this practice really works.

IXL math helps teachers gain extra instructional time

An independent study by Empirical Education looked at the effectiveness of IXL’s math program on 4th and 5th grade students in Beaverton School District in Oregon. At the end of the school year, the study compared student performance between classrooms that used IXL math and those that didn’t, on the Oregon Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (OAKS) math test.

What they found was a 5-percentile gain on the OAKS test for the students in the IXL math classroom compared to the students who didn’t use the program. This gain is equivalent to an extra 6.2 weeks of instructional time over the average duration of a school year—meaning teachers were able to do more with their limited teaching time. Furthermore, an increase in the average IXL session duration by just one minute increased the effectiveness of IXL math by 6.3% over an average year.

Students’ attitudes towards math improve with IXL

Not only did IXL math help students succeed on a standardized test, but it also had a positive effect on students’ attitudes toward math. Seventy-seven percent of teachers said that their students’ level of effort increased. And, 100% of surveyed teachers said that their students’ confidence in learning math increased and that they would recommend IXL to other teachers!