Last week, the Get My Grades team exhibited at The Festival of Education at Wellington College in Berkshire. The weather was glorious and we had many productive conversations with teachers and school leaders about education, curriculum and what the future may hold. Our co-founder, John, gave a seminar on Elaboration, Cognitive Load and Technology to a room of very engaged teachers, explaining how the three can work in unison to achieve the best possible results from students.

In summary (in case you were unable to attend his talk), John explained how it is important to be aware of the cognitive load on your students. On average, students can manage around four bits of information at a time, and anything over this, they can just become lost. Elaboration of their course, if done in the right way by priming them over a series of weeks or months, can pique their interest.

This can increase students’ intrinsic motivation and make them more likely to ask, eventually, the key questions around the topics that they are exposed to. Using a variety of technology platforms, teachers can now see where students’ weakest areas are. They can then adapt their teaching to keep cognitive load down, whilst providing just enough elaboration to help students build on their schemata and join the links between their existing knowledge and all the new information they are learning.

Get My Grades is an award-winning education technology platform that provides interactive textbook content and questions. Student assignments are either marked automatically or self-assessed using our detailed feedback. Get My Grades can save teachers time finding resources, marking assessments, and entering student data.

It is a cost-effective way to give your students access to online, interactive educational content which is automatically updated and mapped to qualifications. The Get My Grades platform has been based on sound educational research regarding the value of feedback, the development of metacognitive skills, and theories of schema and cognitive load.

Book a demo or get in touch to set up a trial account for your school.