Numerous online educational applications have been developed to assist students with their studies during the lockdown period, and this can be overwhelming for learners, parents and educators. “It is however important that the right one is chosen to ensure that students enjoy their learning experience,” explains Marie de Wet, founder of online educational app, Examsta.
“Revolutionary cognitive scientific research around the ‘testing effect’ has given educators a new understanding of how the brain learns, and how instruction, curriculum and assessment can be adapted to be more effective,” says de Wet. “Widely referred to as ‘retrieval practice’, the teaching method is a well-known psychological phenomenon whereby memory recall is accelerated through regular quizzes.”
De Wet explains that Examsta has been developed as an accessible learning tool that enables learners to benefit from this powerful study technique. “Studying is not just a passive process of re-reading information, taking notes and hoping to internalise knowledge,” she explains. “Quizzing and testing facilitates active learning and has been proven to be much more effective for long term retention.”
“Teachers and learners in most learning situations would benefit from increasing the level of retrieval, and this should be preferred to re-teaching as a learning strategy,” says de Wet. “Examsta will give learners the edge when it comes to preparing for exams, where the act of retrieving information prompts the brain to ensure that it is more accessible in the future.”
The educational app provides a web-based platform from which students can access a variety of quizzes based on the South African school syllabus. Each quiz includes 10 to 15 multiple choice questions, with clear explanations and diagrams used to explain answers so that learners can improve their score in the next round. Currently the platform is in testing phase, with Life Sciences quizzes available to Grade 10, 11 and 12 learners free of charge. History and Geography will be available soon and R100 a year from January 2021 will grant users access to quizzes for every subject in their grade.
“We provide an effective and affordable learning tool that will benefit students from all socio-economic backgrounds,” says de Wet. “The website is simple, to minimise data costs for learners and, in the future, we plan to make the app zero-rated so that no data will be required to access content.”
De Wet, a qualified teacher currently completing her Masters in Educational Technology, has almost a decade of experience, including teaching children from low income communities and facilitating remote learning via WhatsApp. While most e-learning platforms focus on Physical Science, de Wet launched Examsta in order to provide the first South African platform to focus on content-heavy subjects, like Geography and History, while properly differentiating between the CAPS and IEB syllabi. The platform has been tested on 500 learners in Cape Town and 81% of survey participants found it to be a useful learning tool.
With Matric exams set to begin in November, de Wet encourages learners to visit www.examsta.co.za where they will be able to access all Life Sciences content free of charge.
