Imagine, as a teacher, being able to check in seconds how well your students understand each and every aspect of their course. Imagine being able to see exactly what they’ve covered and what they’ve missed. Think of how convenient it would be to have all of this data collected and stored for you as your students complete assignments using varied, realistic exam questions with automatic differentiation. Soon, you won’t have to imagine this anymore – from January 2018 all this, and more, will be real. It’s called ‘Get My Grades’ and it has been designed by a team of expert educators to make teachers’, parents’ and students’ lives easier.
Get My Grades is a complete educational technology tool to reduce workload, improve communication and help students to foster a deep understanding of their subjects. It will be launching in English, Mathematics and Sciences for Years 7-11, with automatic support for all of the major exam boards and qualifications including GCSEs, IGCSEs, IB Middle Years and 13+ exams.
Get My Grades has three core features: expertly produced teaching materials, a huge bank of varied questions, and the automatic collection and processing of a wealth of relevant and insightful data. Let’s look at each of these aspects one by one.
We have broken each subject down into a series of concepts, each one referring to a conceptually distinct idea, skill or principle for the student to tackle one at a time. Each concept has a ‘Learn’ page designed to develop a deep and meaningful understanding of the idea at hand while being readily accessible to students. Each page is endowed with links across (and beyond) the curriculum to foster curiosity, in sharp contrast to the over-simplification and narrowing of content that has occurred in the past.
An essential element of learning is practice, and students using Get My Grades will be continually encouraged to practise a variety of different types of questions, not just multiple choice, which are automatically differentiated. Unlike a traditional context where they hand in a book each week, the students are given detailed feedback after each question and the chance to try to mark their own work. The teacher then reviews assignments, giving an insight into not only how well students understand the content, but of their understanding of the criteria.
Then there’s the data. Get My Grades automates the collection and organisation of data including details about student attainment in each concept, when assignments are completed, how long each question took to answer. There’s even a wellbeing and safeguarding report function to collect concerns and responses in one place, making teachers’ lives easier and enabling schools to share much more detailed data with parents in real time.
This might sound exciting, but it is only the beginning. Get My Grades is working with researchers at a university ranked in the top 20 in the UK for psychology to devise more effective ways to teach and assess students to refine and develop our services. Throughout 2018 we will be releasing more subjects, exciting new features and a pioneering character education programme, at no additional cost.
Meet the Get My Grades team at Bett 2018, stand A451, to discuss further.
For more information, visit Get My Grades’ website.
