Submitted by Rachel Gardner on Thu, 04/12/2025 - 10:49
Isaac Science – an innovative learning platform for schools co-developed by researchers here – this week clocked up a major milestone when a student made the 200 millionth question attempt on the site.
The platform, originally called Isaac Physics when it began life in 2014, was developed in collaboration between Cambridge University's Physics Department and this Department. The aim was to address the challenges that many state schools face in teaching physics.
Since then, the platform has expanded to cover maths, chemistry and biology as well as physics. It is now used by over 3,000 schools a year across the UK, including those in areas of high deprivation, ensuring that UK school pupils – from age 11 through to university – have access to free, high-quality resources and encouragement regardless of factors beyond their control, such as where they live.
New data from UCAS (the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service) shows that students, particularly those from under-represented backgrounds, who engage deeply with Isaac Science are more likely to apply to, and receive, offers from selective universities. They are also more likely to achieve higher A-level grades in STEM subjects.
Reaching 200 million question attempts is a fantastic milestone that demonstrates how research-led innovation can have real, measurable impact on education at a national scale.
Prof Alastair Beresford
The platform also supports more than 3,500 teachers (including an estimated 1,000 non-physics teachers who have been asked to teach the subject in schools because of a national shortage of physics teachers in the UK).
The 200 millionth question attempted by a student was a GCSE-level question that asks users to calculate the electrical current at points on a circuit. This question, like all the content on the platform, was provided by subject specialists. But it's a team of Computer Scientists in this Department – including our Head of Department Prof Alastair Beresford – who design, build and operate the platform.
"Reaching 200 million question attempts is a fantastic milestone that demonstrates how research-led innovation can have real, measurable impact on education at a national scale," says Alastair.
Delivering high quality science education
"I'm immensely proud of how far Isaac Science has come since we first developed the technology in Cambridge. What began as research into interactive online learning has evolved into a platform that's making a genuine difference in thousands of schools every day.
"To see our work supporting both students in their learning journey and teachers in delivering high-quality STEM education – particularly in areas facing teacher shortages – is deeply rewarding. It's a testament to what's possible when academic research meets real-world educational needs."
The team here continues to grow and evolve the platform to meet user needs. Regular research is carried out to find out how well it's working as a teaching and learning environment and what can be done to improve it.
This has led to a series of innovations including 'Equality', a tool that allows students to enter equations easily into the platform (whether they’re working on a computer/laptop or a mobile phone) without them having to spend time learning to use specialist software to do so.
An improvement over traditional methods
The platform also offers structured hints to support student learning, says project manager Dr Matthew Patterson, and represents a great improvement over previous homework methods, such as giving students just one opportunity to answer the question and then marking them down for getting it wrong.
The aim of Isaac Science is to build students' competence and confidence by encouraging them to keep going until they succeed.
Dr Matthew Patterson
"The aim of Isaac Science is to build students' competence and confidence," Matthew says. "It deliberately encourages students to go on attempting the question by giving them a series of structured hints on how best to approach it. This persuades them to keep going until they get succeed, which in turn helps build resilience."
The platform collects data on how questions on the site are attempted and how hints are used to assist students.
"Doing this shows us if there are common misconceptions among students about how they should tackle a particular question," Matthew adds. "If there are, we can then work to improve the question and the hints that we provide."
Research continues to be used as Isaac Science evolves. The team behind it noticed interesting behaviour early on, when data showed that boys and girls had distinct approaches to using the scaffolding around physics questions on Isaac Science.
A low stakes learning environment
The boys would enter an answer, and if it was wrong, they would go to the hints. However, the girls would work the problem out, but before they entered their answer, they would go through the hints to check they had done it right.
Professor Lisa Jardine-Wright, who co-founded the programme in the University’s Department of Physics, says: "We have been very keen to make sure that Isaac offers a low stakes environment for students to learn in and build confidence. We don't display whether an Isaac Physics student has used the hints or not, or how many times they have attempted a question.
"We report whether they've attempted the question, and whether they got it right. The result is that students keep trying, develop resilience and see their own progress develop as they need less and less scaffolding."
