“Quotes”

What is Get My Grades?

Get My Grades is an innovative online learning platform that enables students to learn, revise and assess themselves. It automatically collects data on students’ strengths and weaknesses in each part of their course, so that parents, teachers and students can track progress in real time.

Who is Get My Grades for?

Get My Grades is for either parents, schools or private tutors who want to provide outstanding resources to their students whilst tracking their progress automatically. Whoever purchases a subscription can link other users to a student’s account, for free, to see how they are getting on as well.

What exactly does Get My Grades provide?

Get My Grades provides online content for English and Maths, with Sciences and other subjects coming soon. The content includes concept pages, which explain an individual idea clearly with relevant links, images and videos, along with a huge bank of questions to enable students to practise what they have learnt.

So is Get My Grades just an online textbook or revision guide?

Get My Grades is a lot more than an online textbook or revision guide, with interactive content that goes far beyond the course. The platform has 75,000+ questions, of different types (not just multiple choice), providing more detailed feedback than any textbook or revision guide. It also tracks students down to every individual concept, keeping a record of what has been covered and how well students have done.

What question types and feedback are available on Get My Grades?

Students can complete multiple choice questions, like many other EdTech platforms. However, Get My Grades also allows students to complete extended written answers to questions, similar to real exams. There are also specific ‘maths calculation’ questions, where students can input all of the mathematical functions they might require. The platform provides detailed feedback on each question answered.

Does the Get My Grades platform mark all the questions automatically?

The platform does not mark all of the questions automatically; only multiple choice questions. Artificial intelligence isn’t really up to the challenge of trying to mark essays yet and, in any case, students need to learn how to self-assess their own work. Get My Grades gives students detailed guidance on how to do this, allowing them to develop an awareness of how to approach different sorts of questions.

If students can mark their own work, won’t they just cheat?

Students might try to cheat at first; they could say they’ve scored marks they haven’t really scored, but their parents or teachers could check and override their scores at any time – and they will probably get in trouble for doing it! In any case, students probably won’t find it very satisfying to answer a question and then just give themselves full marks repeatedly. The platform has been designed to be ‘cheat-resistant’ and incorporate the best of gamification to encourage motivation whilst avoiding distractions.

How is Get My Grades ‘Cheat-Resistant’?

By getting the students to mark their own answers and by allowing teachers and parents to check and override them, who are students kidding if they try to give themselves extra marks? The Get My Grades team, as professional educators, realise that students soon get bored of trying to trick themselves.

Why does Get My Grades go beyond the course? Isn’t that a bit daunting?

The Get My Grades platform will shortly allow students to select their qualification to see what content is required for their specific course, with the ability to hide the further content they don’t ‘need’ to learn – so there’s no need for it to be daunting. Students should be able to access further content if they want to; whether it’s for further interest or to help them decide which A Levels they would like to take, it’s important to show students how fascinating and broad each subject can be. It’s part of motivating them to love each subject.

Is Get My Grades specific to each exam board?

Very shortly Get My Grades be releasing the qualifications for students to be able to select from, which will include the most popular qualifications from all of the main exam boards (as well as courses for Year Groups). The content presents every conceptual idea in an engaging way and everything a student needs to know for the course they’ve chosen is included.

Are you endorsed or connected to any of the exam boards?

No, Get My Grades is not owned or endorsed by any exam board (or other public bodies). It has no connections to any think tank, major company or political/ religious organisations. Get My Grades’ vision and beliefs are to offer a great education to as many students as possible.

What is Get My Grades’ vision and beliefs?

The team at Get My Grades want all students in the UK to have access to the best education possible and provide outstanding value for money, regardless of their circumstances. They believe all students have the ability to learn and achieve when they are given the right support and put in the necessary effort. They exist to provide the resources to enable every student to enjoy a knowledge-rich curriculum.

What do you mean by a ‘knowledge-rich curriculum’?

A ‘knowledge-rich curriculum’ is one where the knowledge of key concepts and facts forms the basis of the curriculum. Surprisingly, many schools in the last 20 years have had a focus on teaching generic ‘skills’ and have treated the pursuit of a core base of knowledge as unimportant, or worse, damaging.

Why do some people think a knowledge-rich curriculum is damaging?

Sometimes, a knowledge-based curriculum has been seen as the root cause of poor behaviour, because some people think that asking students to cover more content would lead to them becoming bored or disengaged. However, the most engaging teachers always convey a wealth of knowledge, with the enthusiasm that makes students want to find out more and the depth of understanding that fosters understanding and respect.

Isn’t a ‘knowledge-rich curriculum’ all about rote-learning?

A knowledge-rich curriculum is not just about rote-learning; a knowledge-rich curriculum is about teaching students how to understand lots of pieces of information together, including how they will relate to each other. Occasionally it will involve rote-learning for important definitions or facts, but more importantly, it teaches how this knowledge can be used, which is far more stimulating than just rote-learning a fact over and over again.

But isn’t a ‘skills-based curriculum’ more important?

Many schools have, over the past 20 years, tried to focus more on teaching ‘higher-order thinking skills’ or other kinds of transferable skills. However, teaching skills without knowledge is like teaching someone to drive without a car; practically impossible and potentially confusing. If you want to evaluate an argument, you need to know what the different sides of the argument are. Skills come from using knowledge. You can’t analyse something you don’t know enough about.

Is all of this theory behind Get My Grades based on any research?

Get My Grades has been based on a whole wealth of educational and psychological research. Get My Grades is made up of experts on applying schema theory and cognitive load theory in a practical setting. The platform has been based on a selection of well researched ideas and strategies, not just one or two isolated studies. Get My Grades is also collaborating with other academics to conduct further research.

How is Get My Grades collaborating with academics?

Get My Grades is collaborating with the University of Plymouth School of Psychology to apply promising theoretical research to education and test its potential impact. In addition, Get My Grades is joining UCL’s EDUCATE programme in August 2018 to carry out targeted research into the impact the platform can have on student attainment and teacher workload.

How do you plan to reduce teacher workload?

Get My Grades maps out the entire curriculum content for each subject, providing resources, questions, assignments and data-tracking all in one place. Teachers no longer need to search for lessons online, adapt them to meet the needs of different levels, drag piles of marking home or enter rows and rows of data – Get My Grades takes care of it all. Every question the student answers is assessed by the student and the data used to identify the student’s strengths and weaknesses automatically. All the teacher needs to do is review their work and give feedback, anywhere, anytime.

Is Get My Grades a tool to replace teachers?

Teachers will never be replaced, but the Get My Grades ‘learn’ pages include so much content that teachers can use them to inform, complement or even form the basis of entire lessons. Teachers can also use the student progress data provided by the Platform to identify exactly what to plan to cover in their lessons in order to tackle misconceptions. There is no need to plan homework or differentiate because GMG does this for you by providing banks of questions to set and by adapting questions to students’ abilities.

How much does Get My Grades cost?

Get My Grades costs just £20 per student per month for family users, or a discounted price of £150/ year or £200 for 2 years. There are substantial discounts for professional educators buying subscriptions for many students and over longer periods of time – get in touch for more details!