The challenge: Overcoming cramming and boosting retention for students

A challenge that is identified for students, particularly concerning success in the Higher School Certificate (HSC) , is that students often forget what they have learned. This issue is often linked to poor revision habits and limited time, which can lead students to cram before exams, causing cognitive overload and stress. The underlying challenge was to find a solution that could align teaching with High Impact Teaching Practices and Cognitive Load Theory to effectively boost retention and reduce pressure on students. Jason Szkwarek, Teacher - Design and Technology, from Catholic Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn addressed this challenge.

The cechat solution: The Design Genius Agent

To tackle the issues of poor retention and exam stress, the Design Genius, a Design and Technology Stage 6 agent was developed. This AI assistant is a subject-specific  agent that provides syllabus-informed support to both teachers and students - from lesson planning to project advice.

The Design Genius agent is designed to support daily review and strengthen memory retrieval by building automaticity over time, aligning with High Impact Teaching Practices and Cognitive Load Theory. Its implementation involves a structured approach to student interaction:

• Daily review sessions: During roll call, a teacher can paste a prompt into Design Genius for a weekly review session with a Design and Technology student.

• Student engagement: The student is asked to briefly describe what they have learned in their most recent lesson or over the past week. For example, a student might respond with ‘we covered lifecycle analysis’.

• Targeted questions and feedback: The agent then presents a series of short, extended-answer revision questions aligned with the Stage 6 Design and Technology syllabus, selecting questions at random from different topics to ensure a balanced mix of knowledge-based and application-based content. After each student's response, Design Genius provides immediate, constructive feedback, can allocate a mark or score, and offers a clear model answer for comparison. 

Iterative process: This question/feedback cycle continues for the duration of the 10-minute session, covering a variety of syllabus topics. The session concludes with a brief summary and positive reinforcement.

Impact and benefits

The key benefits include:

• Improved knowledge retention: By providing short, syllabus-aligned spaced practice questions each day, the agent directly supports daily review and has the potential to strengthen memory retrieval, reducing the need for last-minute cramming.

• Reduced student stress and overload: Aligning teaching with High Impact Teaching Practices and Cognitive Load Theory helps to boost retention and reduce pressure on students.

• Personalised and adaptive learning: The agent offers subject-specific and syllabus-informed support. It provides immediate and constructive feedback, tailored to student responses, which is crucial for personalised learning.

• Enhanced pedagogical alignment: The agent's functionality aligns with Rosenshine's Principles and aids in building automaticity over time.

This case study illustrates how cechat directly addresses student learning challenges, offering a sophisticated AI-driven approach to support effective revision and long-term knowledge retention.

Let’s chat cechat with Jason Szkwarek