Homework is a given in virtually any school.

Now researchers at the Pittsburgh Science Learning Center -- a collaboration of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh -- say they've found a way to make homework more effective.

In a study of math homework, they found that if every other problem contained a step-by-step solution the students learned more. That was particularly helpful to students who didn't have someone at home to guide them through the exercise.

That's just one of the educational ideas being explored through what the center calls LearnLab, which uses classrooms in more than 50 schools and nationwide for research, much as hospitals and medical schools work together.

The work has been funded by a $25 million grant over five years, awarded in 2004 by the National Science Foundation. At a news conference in the Steel Valley School District yesterday, the center announced that the foundation has renewed its grant for $25 million over an additional five years.

The research is aided by computer tutors, including Carnegie Learning Inc.'s Cognitive Tutor math software.

The computer tutors can constantly assess what students have learned. Their use enables researchers, for example, to see whether students spend time reading the solutions to problems or just rapidly skip over them. It turns out they do study them.

It also enables the researchers to create a massive data bank to explore a range of topics on how students learn. Kenneth Koedinger, professor of human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon and co-director of the learning center, said he hopes the data will "help us understand education in a deeper way."

As a result of Steel Valley's participation, Beth McCallister, math chair at the high and middle schools, said the researchers and teachers have learned from each other. She said that teachers are doing more discovery-based math lessons, more hands-on work and more cooperative learning.

Charles Perfetti, director of Pitt's Learning Research and Development Center, gave an example of foreign language study.

Based on studying college students, Dr. Perfetti said, students learn a language better if items are reviewed at appropriate intervals. If a student masters a list of 50 vocabulary words for a test, that might help the test grade but more repetition is needed for long-term memory.

First Published: April 28, 2009, 4:00 a.m.