GoReact Outperforms Other EdTech

Patrick Luna:

I don’t see how I could provide the same type of meaningful feedback within a written assignment. It’s more so the interactive aspect of it. So what I can do is the students give me a video, I can give them a video back, which is something I do quite a bit. And I remember this happened just a few weeks ago where… I have a large cohort of students, over almost 400 now a year that I am interact with throughout their first year in my program. So one of them came up and told me is like, “Does everybody get a video? Does everybody get a video?” And they thought it was some kind of it took me forever to do because, but what I told them is, “Yeah, everybody gets a video. I literally give them a little synopsis of my feedback just with me talking to them in their GoReact,” and I said, “It really doesn’t take me very long. It’s actually less time than me typing you or writing you feedback. I’m just speaking to you in this natural way.”

And I remember when I was using it during COVID lockdown, and that’s one of the things I loved about it as well, was that interactive aspect where they couldn’t be with me in my physical environment. So I still felt like I could connect with them through video rather than just typing or writing them a response. So what I’ve seen is it that interactive aspect is something they really respond positively to, and it’s not just being able to go into their assignment and to see specifically where I want them to improve or where I want to reinforce good behavior, it’s that interactive aspect and that personal aspect of it as well.

So one of the other things, and this is kind of new, but I’ve noticed this ever since I started to use it, is I will have students sometimes resubmit assignments utilizing the feedback that I gave them originally. So I’ve started doing this a lot, this is a core concept of competency-based education as well, where I will have them implement my feedback, upload a new video, and then pinpoint where they changed their original assignment, and what I’ve realized is through this feedback mechanism, I don’t have to re-explain the feedback to them. The feedback is all there. And just as kind of a gut response that I have as an educator is, “Okay, so I gave them tons of feedback, so they’re going to need some clarification,” but I find myself not having to re-explain a lot of things to them because of how pinpointed I can make the feedback within their assignments. So it’s not a big paragraph I’m giving them at the end of their submission, it’s I go into their assignments and I give them pinpointed feedback based on their video.

So that’s something that I’ve noticed. And it also works within the peer feedback world as well. Because I have so many students, I do a lot of peer feedback and they can interact with each other in the same way as I would as their instructor, so it works both ways. So tons of benefits. In fact, when I first started using it, it was the feedback mechanism that sold me on it. I haven’t seen anything in the EdTech space that does anything comparable to what GoReact does with the ability to provide just meaningful feedback in that way.