Navigating AI in Teacher Education

Jessica Hurdley:

Hello and welcome to our round table today. We’re thrilled that you have joined us and hope you enjoy this round table discussion. Hopefully you’ll be able to walk away prepared to inspire your students and make a positive impact in their careers. My name is Jessica Hurley. I’m on the GoReact team and we’re hosting today’s round table. For those of you not familiar with GoReact and why this topic is so important to us, GoReact is a video feedback solution that’s taken our 10 years of experience in helping higher education institutions with skill development to now helping school districts support their teacher growth. Just a heads up, we are recording today’s round table as well. We want to hear your thoughts, experiences, your opinions on the questions asked. You can jump right in. You can also raise your hand using the feature that you, that’s right on the bottom of your screen. You’ll see some emoji options too located there. We know that opinions of AI and education are really across the board, so make sure you’re kind and professional toward others during this round table discussion as well. Okay, perfect. So for our first question, what kinds of conversations around AI are happening among your colleagues and your students? Is there someone who wants to jump in first?

Kim Stoffers:

I can start. I work for Grand Canyon University and we are very much asked to use AI to share with our students. So I work both on the curriculum instructional design side and I also get to teach. So really trying to push the forefront of ai, but as probably all of us, we have jumper iners and people ready to go all for it. And then we have ones that are just very on the opposite side saying, this isn’t ethical, this isn’t all of this stuff. And so we really tried to say, well, we use Grammarly, we use spell check, so let’s think of it kind of like that and let’s slowly have it help us, let’s write our stuff, but have it help us and have it adjust for us. So we’re really trying to move forward with it, but again, it really depends on the individual and we’re trying to push it forward also within our curriculum and for our future educators.

Jessica Hurdley:

Good to know there. Is anyone else kind of experiencing something similar or maybe something different?

Tom Fisher:

So this is Tom Fisher from UNC Charlotte. So I mean our whole university actually our one IT department has done a great job of setting up the resources that we use, the best resources that the students have access to when they sign and use and their nine internet credentials so that they don’t have to use, I mean we don’t care if they use chat GPT or Magic Choice or something like that. We don’t care. But we do have Gemini set up for them already. We have all sorts of information for them to look at in terms of what is ethical, what is sort of unethical. Obviously we want faculty to use it, we want to leverage it. We had to lean right into it. We knew when it came out that people were going to start using it. So different people throughout the College of Ed have sort of taken, I’m not going to say that I’m one of the ones that took the leadership on it, but there’s people in each department that sort of took leadership on it and they have a committee they’re meeting, they’re talking about ways that we can use it in our coursework because we know the students are going to use it.

So we want them to be more evaluators because now they’re not creators as much anymore. So we want them to be evaluators of what is out there and what’s available and make sure that we’re sort of using it the right way.

Erin Stanley:

Can I ask a clarifying question? Both Tom and Kim, it sounds like from what you’re describing, this is really coming kind of not from top down. It’s not that the president or maybe your CAO or whatever is saying, guys, we need to do something here. It’s more the faculty or the instructional designers. Did I get that right?

Tom Fisher:

So I’ll go first Kim, if that’s okay. Just I have this up and I know I’m not sharing screen, but our most recent charge from one IT in terms of how the stuff is organized is literally October. Aaron and our students have been using it since obviously last year and when it came out. So our most updated information that’s coming from our IT department, which is college-wide university-wide statement on it really didn’t even come out until October. So yeah, I think it think it’s probably student driven then faculty like, ah, students are using this crazy, we got to get on this. I think that’s what it is. And of course when you have, our university is so large and there’s so many departments, public university, there’s so many people that have to be involved in what is going to be our official statement on this, what are going to be the protocols. It takes a while to develop those. They weren’t going to do that overnight, you know what I mean? So it makes sense that it took this long for us to have that statement on it and that organization of it. But yeah, I would definitely say it was student faculty and then the college as a whole catching up.

Kim Stoffers:

Actually I think Aaron, I speak from my experience, but ours is coming from president down. So yes, our students and everything, they’ve jumped on board, but ours really has come from our CEO and our president. He says, this is the forefront. We’ve got to jump on board, we’ve got to help teach our students. We have to have an ethical way to use it. So there’s a lot going on the big end of ours with the background, just like Thomas said, of creating those documents and protocols and stuff. So our students have resources, but because I work in the instructional design piece, it was brought to us saying we need to start incorporating this into our programs and into our courses. At Grand Canyon we have a centralized curriculum. So because ours is hugely online, we want to ensure that everybody is being measured the same way. So it came down to us to say how are we going to put it and how are we going to teach our students within? And we’re using GoReact for some of that. And I know there’s more questions coming up about that, but we’re starting to incorporate the real life application after a product is developed through an AI source.

Jessica Hurdley:

Is there anyone else having those kinds of conversations? You can enter it in the chat too.

Tara:

Hi, if I may. Can you guys hear me okay?

Jessica Hurdley:

Yes.

Tara:

So my name is Tara. I’m affiliated with both the University of Northern Iowa and University of Iowa. And where we’re sitting is, I’m kind of similar to what was said earlier. We have some that are jumping right in and then we have some faculty that are, should I say this, penalizing students for using it. And I just think that it would be nice if everyone could get on the same page and I don’t know if we’ve gotten that directorate yet from the top people because it has huge ramifications for our future teachers and we’re always behind the curve I feel like. And we’re always trying to play catch up. And so I just feel that we need to start this. We need to start showing our teachers how to use it properly. I mean, I keep referring back to when Wikipedia first came out and how people are like, don’t use it. And then people are like, well use it and this and that and the other. But I feel that if we teach people how to use it properly and then therefore they can implement it in their classrooms because students are are using ai, future students are going to use AI careers for ai. And so it’s just for me, asinine that professors are I being real derogatory towards the use of it. And I think it’s just because they fear it and that they don’t have enough information.

Jessica Hurdley:

Absolutely. That was going to be my next question if you didn’t answer that too, why people haven’t been embracing that many new teachers will be teaching kids who grew up with AI and don’t know any differently. What do you think are some skills that new teachers should have to deal with this changing environment and changing kind of knowledge scope of the kids that are growing up with ai?

Kim Stoffers:

Well, I think we really need to teach our teachers to use AI as a first draft principle. Our information we’re putting into something and they’re giving us something back, but we don’t just copy and paste what they give back. We’ve got to read through it. We may have to do some research, we don’t know what it’s hallucination or not. So we really just need to really teach them, okay, it’s still your stuff, putting it in. You’re getting something back. What are you going to look through? What’s true, what’s not? How can you enhance it? What other questions could you ask to get it a little bit deeper than where you’re at right now? And the other thing we also need to teach our students is how to change the font when they put it all onto a document because I know what you copy and paste when it all looks different. So I mean, that’s not something we really should teach ’em, but come on guys. If it’s straight copy and paste, then you’re clearly not reading through it and making it look like one unified document, but that’s beside the point.

Erin Stanley:

Absolutely.

Tom Fisher:

So Jessica, I was going to go back to that point I made about becoming evaluators rather than creators. So the idea that we want them to critically evaluate what it is that they’re getting, and our program, and I’m sure College of Ed across the country are dealing with folks that are going to districts where they’re using a lot of scripted curriculum. So this is no different than scripted curriculum to me in terms of can you look at it and tell me why you’re this activity? Where did this come from? How do you know that it’s going to be effective? So looking at those things, not just having them spit it out at you is no different than some walking into a job in a district teaching CTE and them giving you a canvas page that’s already created and already has everything you’re supposed to do. You know why you’re doing those things. Do you know why those are best practices? So I think that’s part of it for us is that we want them to be critical evaluators of the information that they’re getting. Are you going to use this lesson plan? Do you know that this is a good lesson plan that Gemini just created for you? Why are you using this? So I think that’s part of it, is getting them to critically think and be a little bit more discernible about what they’re going to use from ai.

Jessica Hurdley:

Absolutely. And then they can kind of pass along those skills to the students they’re teaching in their schools as well.

Andrew:

Hey, good morning. Can you all hear me? Am I unmuted? Hi, my name’s Andrew Rose. I work with an organization called I Teach. I was going to say that we recently partnered with Khan Academy to embed conmigo throughout our entire coursework sequence. And so the perspective we are taking is we want to empower our teacher candidates to enter into the AI work so that they know how to do it and to what Jessica was just saying that they can then teach their students ethical ways to use ai. But it was a paradigm shift for us because for instance, lesson planning, conmigo helps socratically think through how to develop a lesson plan. So we changed our assessments to go from what is embedded in a lesson plan to what to Thomas’s point, what’s the critical thinking behind it? And so we had to do a philosophical audit on how we run assessments to change the way we are looking at the output, assuming that they were using some sort of ai. In our instance, we’re using Conmigo, assuming that they’re using that to build lesson plans. Then what is assessing the teacher’s knowledge of lesson plan build out actually look like? And so that’s been a shift for us over the past six months or so.

Jessica Hurdley:

How did you help others embrace that shift? That might have been a golden curve.

Andrew:

I think that’s ongoing. I think part of it was seeing the efficiency that can be gained by using AI and that it’s not like an enemy, but it’s like a tool. Kim was talking about Wikipedia. I think more of the calculator when it came out is now everyone doesn’t have to learn math. We have a calculator. And so thinking that this is not a matter along lesson plan topic, this isn’t a matter of you don’t have to learn lesson plans anymore. It’s a matter of you have a new tool, your lesson plan should become infinitely or measurably better now that you can spend more time critically thinking about what you want to teach and less time on how we actually walk through that methodology. Our technology officer here at I teach was talking to me recently thinking about ai. It now allows individuals to be a lot more creative.

I don’t know about your experience with it, but I now am an Excel mastermind because I don’t have to think through how do I actually do this in Excel? I just can think through what I want to do in Excel. And so I think the same thing can happen in lesson planning. I don’t have to think through necessarily how to develop the lesson plan. I can actually spend time thinking about what do I want to teach and then leverage ai. So I think to your question, Jessica, for us it’s a matter of showing the output and the benefits that we can get from it.

Erin Stanley:

I like that. I think you bring up such a good point though. That is one of the more scary parts of AI is that it might mean we have to go back and redo some of our process or reassess some of our assumptions that we make about how we’re providing lessons plans and how students are learning. I think there’s going to be a natural shift to teaching more durable skills that might not even be super conscious just because of the AI tools we have in front of us, for example. So that to me is the part that’s like nobody wants to talk about because that’s a lot of work. That means we really have to reassess everything.

Jessica Hurdley:

And I think part of Andrew, I know he put in the chat that he had to jump off, but I think part of what he said alludes to the next question we had as well, about how do you envision AI transforming the role of teachers in the next five years? And how he stated how they’re transitioning their thought process kind of helps is helping the teachers transition their thought process of how they’re going to use GoReact and transitioning to that output. Does anybody else want to chime in and add anything there?

Tara:

Yeah, if I may. Well, I’m hoping that we see a shift from, depending on the subject, but the rote memorization and things like that, and using AI to shift to more having students analyze and using those higher order thinking skills rather than just trying to shove content down their throat, which we’ve been doing for how long now. Sorry if I seem a little critical, but having a pedagological shift to that is just going to benefit everyone. And so I’m hopeful that we can kind of see that shift in education and teacher education also in the world of special education. I mean, AI is doing amazing things for differentiation, amazing things for modifying things for students and even helping. I had a class last night and one of my, she’s a teacher, but she’s getting her special ed endorsement and she’s like, I have three IEPs to write and I’ve never written one.

And I was like, okay, check these things out. And so I think it’s going to be a real benefit. And I also belong to the CDL group. I don’t know if you guys have heard C-I-D-D-L-C-L. Don’t ask me what it stands for. I’ve got too many acronyms in my head. But when we talk about this, we talk about AI as a thought partner. And I think if maybe we shift our vernacular a little bit to frame it that way, that this is a tool, it’s a thought partner and it’s something to help make everything accessible for all, then maybe people might be more willing to embrace it. I don’t know. I like that.

Kim Stoffers:

And to kind of piggyback off what Tara said, I feel like we’re going to start developing a different part of our student’s brains now. I’m a former high school math teacher, and the way I was taught was this is how you do it now. You can do it great versus the why behind it. And now we can start developing some of those problem solving skills within their own brains and have them start questioning, well, why are we doing this? Where can I go? I mean, at one point we had to embrace Google and people were like, that’s going to do all of our stuff for us. This is really no different. We just have to have that mind shift. But I really think we’re going to start developing more critical thinkers than just top or bottom level. We know things, but I want my students to learn how to think through things. I don’t care if they get it right or wrong, but what was your process of thinking through it to get to whatever conclusion you got? We learn the most from when we fail or don’t get it right, but no one ever teaches us how to think. And I think this is going to help with that analytical part of their brains.

Jessica Hurdley:

How do you think that’s going to shift their role too as teachers with giving them those skills? How do you think that that is going to shift the teacher role?

Kim Stoffers:

Help they pass those skills along as they learn them The same thing. We teach what we know. So if we’re starting to develop these new things within ourselves, then we’re going to pass it on to our students and how do we do this? And hopefully we get away from telling answers and being like, okay, well what questions can we ask to learn this information? And how do we know if that information’s correct and what’s another way we can maybe define that versus that if we’re questioning this, how can we go another route? So I think the more we pick up and the more we’re taught on how to use it, the more they’re going to push it off to their students and allow them to be those thinkers and those talkers within themselves and not the I’m the teacher, listen to me. I taught you something.

Now you can do it. Let’s kind of get away from that. We have too many tools to use that we can look up stuff. And I tell just a side note, my son’s three and I had to fill out all these preschool papers for him, and they’re like, what do you want him to learn? I don’t need him to learn something. I need him to learn social skills, how to play with others, how to be kind, because he can look stuff up and I’ll show him how to look stuff up. So it’s really shifting from I can find the answer to that deeper part of it.

Tara:

And I think what Kim was saying, or to go along with what she’s saying, I’d like to see that teachers become partners in learning with our students rather than I’m just going to the bank deposit the form of learning and education and seeing it as a collaborative effort between students and teachers. And with that, I’m not telling you guys anything you don’t know. You get more buy-in, you get more engagement, you get more learning when you approach things like that. So that’s what I’m hopeful for the future. When it comes to future teachers and ai,

Susanne:

I’m laughing at the parallels to AI and when the worldwide web started, and I was teaching K 12 at the time, and how many teachers were so overwhelmed with the idea of the worldwide web and how are we going to make our students good consumers of the web? And I remember doing a civil war project with a student and he looked up some information about Abraham Lincoln and it was such a fallacy of what really is happening. And he’s like, but it’s on the web, so it must be true. And so I’m trying to work with my faculty about embracing ai, and they’re very stagnant in, well, you got to learn it. You got to learn it, you got to do it. I’m trying to explain to them that it’s a lot like how we had to embrace web and that we need to think about the social emotional burnout and everything of our students, and that how we can teach them to be good thought partners, as Kim was saying, but also to work smarter, not harder.

And that this can help you as you’re trying to navigate the 3000 decisions you have to make in a day while your brain hurts. But the end of the day, because most people need to make as many decisions as we do as teachers every day, but for me, I really what my faculty to embrace it and use it as a tool. And Tara brought up Cyl. There is an excellent I webinar that Sean Smith did where he had his doc students compare how you can find alternative text and accommodations and how one search engine doesn’t necessarily give you the best information. And they compared several different AI generators, and that one was actually better for what the goal of the assignment was. And so they compared it also to what is your teaching goal and objective for that day. So I thought that was a really good one if you want to enhance your learning to look at that one by Sean Smith, because I just think it was, I haven’t bed assignments in our courses where I say, here’s an IEP goal that was generated by chat GPT. What’s wrong with it? This is not a good one. And in Sean Smith’s webinar, he talks about being cautious and those things, but he also talks about potential biases and that because you can create biases because the AI keeps learning, it’s generative. And so the more you search and the more other people are searching, it can create a bias that we don’t necessarily want to support. So you’ve got to be, like Kim said, a good consumer.

Jessica Hurdley:

I love that assignment too, Suzanne, that you’re entering in. Is anybody else using any other assignments that they’re kind of embracing and integrating AI into?

Tom Fisher:

So we have our lesson planning course that’s taught by several different people, and it is mimicked across the different programs. And one of the things that they do is they have the students, they tell them in advance, this is going to be one of your assignments, and they’re developing a lesson plan. And then they then have to, at the end of the semester, generate an AI lesson plan that follows the same. And then look to see, Hey, did my lesson plan that I created without ai, what does it look like in comparison to the AI lesson plan that was created with the same exact categories, the same exact needs that were going to be in there. And so I think that that’s a good way for them to see, okay, what would you put in here? What is AI going to put in here? And then again, critically evaluate are these good choices that I was making, where did these choices come from?

Are these legitimately good choices? And one of the things I would want to go back to that we don’t want to miss here is, hey, it can be our planning partner, but at the end of the day, if you can’t execute that lesson plan, you’re the teacher that has to execute that. And AI is not going to do your time management for you. It’s not going to make those end game adjustments for you. And I would just anecdotally use a lesson plan that I saw yesterday that I know was AI generated and have really great activities in it, and not one single activity that was in the teacher’s lesson plan ever got finished. So that person was, and that was one of the things we talked about, was that teachers time management and implementing those activities because it gave such a wealth of ideas that were around the topic of symbolism.

And I won’t go into exactly what it was. It was ELA English Language Arts, and it was all these great activities, and the person was like, oh, I love all these activities. Did not finish a single one looking at the clock seeing, oh, we got to adjust, we got to move on. And there was never a time where we sort of debriefed why we did some of the things around symbolism because there was sort of a rush to get into these really student active activities where they were working together collaboratively on stuff where they were looking at stuff personally, how symbolism impacted them. But in the end, we needed to get to the complex text, which was what we were focusing on, and we never really got deeply into that. So my conversation later what that candidate was, Hey, you needed to decide what you really should have used. What did you actually have time for in this 75 minute class? You were over-planned and you tried to do all of it, but it’s not doable. So I think that’s where our teachers are going to have to be those ones that evaluate what do I have? Can I do it all? What’s best for the students in my classroom? Because AI doesn’t know who’s sitting in front of you when you’re teaching.

Jessica Hurdley:

Absolutely.

Kim Stoffers:

I love that. I just literally put in the chat that I want to take an AI generated maybe not the best AI generated lesson plan and make my students feel what it’s like so they can see and then go back and analyze that. That’s awesome. Thank you for sharing.

Jessica Hurdley:

Any other ideas of incorporating AI into assignments that you’re giving to your teacher candidates?

Kim Stoffers:

So we are starting to incorporate in our courses and programs, especially now that we are all on board using GoReact in our assignments. So we’re having them generate a lesson plan or a digital presentation or something on content, and then we’re having them teach it or actually present their digital content so then they can see the feeling if it really worked the way it should or not. And then we can also hear their analytics behind it and we’ll have additional questions behind it. So we’re actually having them apply what they, so saving time, finding a lesson plan, modifying it, but then you’re going to present it so then you can see what works and doesn’t. The other thing I did, I think to piggyback off one of the other questions is we use chat GPT with a class of mine, but I have them, what is three different ways you can teach blah, blah, blah. So then they can see three different ways, and then we talk about what’s your teaching style and which one fits best. So at least at that point, we’re looking at each part of the lesson plan, but we’re asking them to generate multiple things so that we can pick and choose as we go, what works for me as an individual

Jessica Hurdley:

And really teaching them to analyze what they’re doing with ai. Absolutely.

Kim Stoffers:

And they’re learning styles and teaching styles all different.

Jessica Hurdley:

Yes, absolutely. Can you anyone on the call share examples of how you personally have integrated AI into your own teaching practice?

Tara:

Yeah, so I’ve taken a large research article, if you will, and I broke my students up into groups, and this is asynchronous class, and so they had to choose an ai, and I started just a plain Excel shareable sheet of AI resources. So every time I find a new one, I throw it in there because it’s coming in like a hailstorm. So I said, you guys pick which AI site you want, upload the article. And I said, you can’t use notebook LM for the podcast, which I love, love, love, but I said, you can’t do that one. And so what they did, they each chose one and I said, you can find your own or whatever. And then we came back together and then they shared out what they used and the summary of the article, how they summarized the article, how AI summarized it, all of that sort of thing. And what I really loved about it was was just so interdisciplinary in that they learned the content that I needed them to. And because they were hearing it, they heard it five different ways. They heard it summarized five different ways because of the groups. They got to be exposed to a high level research article, but yet they didn’t have to understand all the scientific vernacular that was in the article, and then they got to explore AI sites. And so that’s one of the ways that I’ve used it in my synchronous class.

Jessica Hurdley:

Awesome. If you have any AI resources that you want to drop in the chat too, please feel free to do so. Thank you so much for sharing those sdel resources as well.

Tara:

I have actually asked University of Northern Iowa, well, our special education department, if we could have a resource page on our website so we can just have a place where we can deposit all of these resources for students. And so I am hopeful that we’re going to get that up and going here soon.

Jessica Hurdley:

One other question, what do you think are the biggest hurdles or hesitations around using AI and teacher prep programs right now? What are you seeing internally and what are you hearing from other programs?

Kim Stoffers:

I can start, I think so many people feel like they are going to lose that personal connection because it’s an outside source where I kind of feel the opposite. I feel like if that AI can do this for me, then I can spend more time on making those personal connections, getting to know somebody that way. But I think a lot of times, and I even hear because we’re using some of the AI features on feedback in GoReact where our students don’t want that because then the teachers aren’t analyzing it. And I’m like, no, no, no, no. It is just again, a different mind shift. They get to read and see what they feel and we make them reply to the AI parts, and then the teacher goes in and does all the analytics too and does give them a grade. But I think so many people feel we’re going to lose that personal connection and it’s all going to be out there on the web and the computers and I’m not going to know my students. And so I think that’s a big hesitation for a handful.

Susanne:

I’m seeing that our clinical practice, people are concerned about the AI and GoReact because it provides them a basic level of feedback and that now they are required to do higher levels of feedback and they don’t feel comfortable or confident in providing that level of feedback. It was very easy for them to make the comments around, oh, well, you say too much. And now that GoReact has that feature we have to discuss with them and give them professional development about how you do higher levels of feedback and how you can have the adult learner as the focus. It’s not the same kind of feedback that you give at the elementary or K through 12 stage and then the old sandwich, they’re all stuck on the sandwich. Start with positive, zing ’em with a negative, then end with a positive isn’t what adult learners value.

And there’s a lot of biases in giving feedback as well. For instance, Jessica does a lesson and she thinks she did really bad, and I as her evaluator giving her feedback say, oh, you did so great. You’re so awesome. She devalues that feedback then because internally she feels I didn’t do that well on that lesson. And so then you’ve lost that professional level of trust with someone to actually drive you to being a better teacher. And so for us, they’re struggling because now they’re just not comfortable with the types of feedback that is needed when you use GoReact with the ai.

Jessica Hurdley:

I’m going to drop our resource in the chat. We recently had our client conference and Karen Andronico from Fordham University, she had a session, a short 15 minute session on how she helps to train her supervisors to leave greater levels and depths of feedback for the students and kind of what she’s had them do in the model that she’s had them embrace. So if there’s any questions on that as well, you can email her. She’s completely open to having conversations about that too. But that resource might be helpful.

Tom Fisher:

Jessica, I don’t know if this will help even transition where we’re going with this conversation, but one of the things I would just chime in on is as somebody that gives a ton of feedback and uses rubrics and AI generated rubrics, one of the things that I think is important is the conversation needs to be about the self-regulation of what you’re going to use and how you’re going to use it. And that’s what I want people to do and know that’s the ethical standard for me. My rubrics what go through and my students are going to know that say the glows and grows that come off of the rubric might’ve been AI generated, but the next steps, I personalize those things. So I choose to do that, and they know where it’s coming from and AI doesn’t know who they are. So to segue that into using, I’m using the AI assistant for observation number three.

Now, some people have done that and we had a seminar last night and some people are excited about dropping their video in and see what it looks like. And one of the comments from one of the candidates last night was that they were first overwhelmed by AI assistant because there was more comments from AI assistant, there was more markers from them than there was from me. And then the next thing was is that AI assistant was nicer than Dr. Fisher was with the comments. So we had a good chuckle about that. But in all seriousness, that’s one of the things that I noticed and I told them to be on the lookout for is don’t be overwhelmed. I’ve chosen X number of markers that they gave me. I told them all these are different markers than I’ve been using with you guys on a regular basis, not at that point yet where I get to decide what those are.

So those markers are going to be the ones that you get, but then you will see me come through and I’ll follow up with some of those things. So those are a couple of things right now that we’re seeing is that they’re maybe overwhelmed and some of that is by the marker choice and that some of it will be, I don’t want to use the word redundant, but there’s going to be redundant feedback that’s given. If something is seen in one of those chapters that is consistent that they’re doing over say 30 or 45 minutes, they’re seeing the same feedback over and over, whereas I’m better at summarizing personally what I’m seeing of the pedagogy. And that’s what it really comes down to is when I’m seeing somebody, I’m going to have a better handle on the pedagogy until maybe we create better, I don’t want to say better, but different markers.

Does that make sense? And I know you and I talked about that before I initiated it was when I looked at those markers, I said, I’ll throw myself under the bus here. When I said to you, I was like, are those only ones I can choose? And you’re like, yeah. And I was like, I can’t make my own. And you’re like, no, not yet. Not yet. Not yet. But I think that’s the transition is trying to figure out the volume right now. And I don’t know if anybody else is experiencing that. Kim, I think you said you’re using it. Are you using the AI assistant? Are you sort of overwhelmed by the volume of the markers that are used?

Kim Stoffers:

I actually just set my, they’re doing their assignment this week, so we’ll see. And I don’t know. I’m excited to see what it is, but yes, we finally clicked the button that we can use it, but we haven’t gotten to that assignment in the class that I’m teaching yet. So I’ll know after Thanksgiving. But it’s good that you say that. So I can kind of forewarn them a little bit like, Hey, you might see a lot. Just let’s talk about it after so we can adjust it for the next.

Tom Fisher:

And like I said, Jessica, you tell me, I have no idea how the settings work, but in terms of, I try to be a little bit more judicious about when I’m going to Mark, and then when I have my markers, I know that I have a good number that are from our evaluation tool, but I’ll cluster them. And I’m not seeing that with the AI assistant. It was blasting out several of ’em. The video chapter’s good, but then when you have the other ones in there that’s feedback or praise or feedback for the candidate on those different categories. The AI assistance is definitely not as judicious as I would be.

Jessica Hurdley:

Good feedback. We’ll definitely pass that along to our product team. We may need to just kind of draw in some of those markers to make it not as overwhelming for your students. Maybe first observation, second observation, look for little different things. We can have a conversation about that as well, kind of moving some of those.

Tom Fisher:

I think I should have picked somebody to go first on that. That wasn’t like a nervous Nelly when it popped up all because they saw the AI before they saw anything else. Do you know what I mean? It was in there and they had access to it and they’re like, whoa, what is this? And I’m like, oh yeah, I’m playing around with the AI assistant. Don’t be overwhelmed. So that’s probably on me for not getting out in front of it and picking a different Guinea pig than the person that I did. So for anybody that hasn’t used it yet, do that, make sure that you have a really good Guinea pig that you’re going to use to do the first one so that it’s somebody that doesn’t sort of feel overwhelmed because the first person that used it was definitely a little overwhelmed

Jessica Hurdley:

For those who have used it too. Have you seen that it’s helped you create efficiencies just like other AI tools have created efficiencies for your students and whatnot as well?

Tara:

So I’ll say I’m new to GoReact, and this semester I have supervisors who are overseeing my practicum students, but next semester I’ll be the one doing it. So I really need to jump in to GoReact and explore a lot more. So I’m sure there’s tutorials and stuff that I can and look at on there. So I am looking forward to checking it out and seeing how it can be a benefit. And so if there’s anything that you guys can advise your favorite things or whatever, that’d be cool. Send them my way.

Jessica Hurdley:

Absolutely. Feel free to reach out to your client success manager at any time too. They’re happy to. And any of us are happy to walk you through the process. Is there anything else anyone wants to add for any of the questions today or related to our topic?

Kim Stoffers:

I was just going to share quickly with Tara, if you’re grading in Gore, react, bump the speed up so that you’re not watching it. One-to-one, make it a little faster, but don’t comment to your students to down, because I’ve done that before. I’m watching it on 1.7, and then I was like, you really should probably slow down when you’re speaking. And I was like, so that’s just a little tidbit that hopefully you can learn from. My mistake.

Tara:

Hey, it takes a village. So I

Kim Stoffers:

Appreciate that.

Tom Fisher:

And I would say that when we first started using GoReact, the easiest way for me to show them how to make a GoReact video was for me to make a GoReact video that they could watch. So now what I should have done here, and then my advice here is with the AI assistant, why not put your own video, take your own video and put it in there and run it through the AI assistant so that you see what it looks like, right? Experience that on both ends. So if you do have a video, if you take a quick video of some teaching you’re doing or a demonstration or something like that, especially online teachers, we all have those. I mean, I have the one from last night. I could load it in today and see how critically it assesses me. So I think that’s a good idea to do that yourself. Put it in there and see how it comes back on you.

Tara:

Thank you.

Jessica Hurdley:

Great advice. Great advice. One thing to add, we do host a virtual event every April called Reaction. Our Reaction insiders just took place for all of our clients, but for our conference in April, it’s all about educational trends and successes. Our call for speakers is now open and we’d encourage everybody to apply before the holidays. Erin’s going to go ahead and drop that link in the chat. Thank you all for attending today and joining us in this discussion, making it really a round table discussion with everybody involved. We hope to see you at a GoReact future webinar and have a wonderful rest of your week.