Engaging, Learning, and Leading With GoReact

PRESENTER

Dr. Karen Jackson

Dr. Karen T. Jackson is a tenured associate professor in the department of Leadership Studies and Adult Education at North Carolina A&T State University. She teaches Leadership for Civic and Community Engagement, Ethics and Decision-making, Research Design, Quantitative and Qualitative Research Methods and serves as a dissertation advisor in the Leadership Studies program. Dr. Jackson has experience as a community engagement and leadership researcher and evaluator and has published research in these areas. Dr. Jackson is registered as a preferred evaluator by the Expanding the Bench ACE Network which is a network focused on increasing diversity in research and evaluation. She is a visiting scholar with the Center for the Advancement of STEM Leadership (CASL) at the University of the Virgin Islands. She was a member of the Board of Directors for the American Evaluation Association (2020 – 2023) and is the incoming president for AEA (2024-2026).

TRANSCRIPT

Matthew Short:

With housekeeping wrapped up, I am pleased to introduce Dr. Karen T. Jackson, a tenure and associate professor in the Department of Leadership Studies in Adult Education at North Carolina a and T State University. She is also joined here today by a few of her students who will also be sharing their experience utilizing GoReact. So with introductions, I’ll turn the floor over to you, Dr. Jackson.

Karen Jackson:

Thank you so much, Matthew, and welcome everyone to our session and thank you for being here with us today. Session here today is about how a group of students in my leadership studies course for leadership for Civic and Community Engagement, how we’ve used GoReact in our class. And we’re going to talk about, we have a list of questions. So first I would like to just kind of tell you the Run a show. So I’ll open up by telling you a little bit about our course and how we got here. And then I’m going to have each of our panelists who are students in my leadership for Civic and community engagement course, introduce themselves and tell a little bit about their experiences with GoReact. And then we’ll talk about these. We have questions around each of the categories you see here. So Future GoReact opportunities, focusing on connection and safe digital spaces, the technicalities, so spaces where GoReact is challenging and recommendations for addressing those challenges.

And then we also will dig a little bit into assignments that we created where we combine GoReact and generative AI use. So opening up with just a little bit of a story. So I have the definition that GoReact has for itself on its website here just is kind of a place for us to start. And so that I can tell a little bit about the story of how we got to this conference. So I use GoReact in my courses in the leadership studies doctoral program, and I use it as a tool for discussion in our learning management system, which we use Blackboard. And so the parts of GoReact from the GoReact definition that I use are basically for sharing and for feedback and for content and a little bit for the analytical, but more so because this is a civic and community engagement course.

I was interested in using GoReact because of the humanizing piece, because of the community building piece. And so when we got the opportunity to submit a proposal to the Gore conference, one of the questions I asked myself as well as the panelists who are students in my class is how good do we do at building community using GoReact? And that was kind of our jumping off point into the conversation about the use of GoReact. But as we dug deeper, we began to learn other things and ways of thinking about how to use GoReact moving forward. So hopefully we hope that you can, as I learn from my students’ experiences, we hope that we can learn from you and that you’ll learn from us the course a little bit about our course, the course that my students who are the panelists here today is designed to provide students with an understanding and working knowledge of civic engagement as a process of working in collaboration with community stakeholders into enhance leadership ability, foster community building, engage in capacity building, and to increase civic participation and guide policy change. The students in our leadership studies PhD program are from all different types of leadership roles. And you’ll learn a little bit about my students in just a minute, but in their own right, they’re in the world doing things, applying technology in different ways. So I also wanted to kind of capitalize on that opportunity to have this group of leaders think about not just how we use GoReact in our classroom, but also how it could be applied in the work that they do in the world.

So again, we’ve got a list of questions here that we will go over throughout the course of our time together here today. The questions around the future of GoReact use are what can A and DQ stands for a discussion question hour on GoReact look like. How would you envision a discussion question hour, improving the community building experience for our course? So that’s one of the questions or a group of questions we will explore here. The second theme from, and these themes came out of our discussions and planning for today. So focusing on connection and safe digital spaces. How can GoReact expand into other areas outside of higher education to create connection and safe digital spaces? We also talked about challenges When students don’t love GoReact, what do they say and how can we change their minds? And lastly, the creating assignments and combining GoReact with Gen AI use. How can AI generated assignments that combine gen AI and GoReact be improved upon through human interaction? So next I will have our panelists, students in the leadership for Civic and community engagement course introduce themselves, and I’m going to take down the slides so we can see each other and stop sharing my screen so that we can talk to each other.

And I will start with Ms. Pamela Baker, would you introduce yourself? And then from there, we’ll go Pam, Brenden Quinto and Stephanie.

Pamela Baker:

Thank you, Dr. Jackson. As said, I’m Pamela Baker and I am an instructor at North Carolina a and t in the political science space. And as well, I am on the leadership team for two boards in the nonprofit education space. And this is my first time using GoReact in this class. So I didn’t have any previous knowledge or understanding at all. So when I came to the tool, it really was because it was assigned to do it and I found it to be a tool that I wanted to learn. But I also found that the initial instruction of community building, as we will talk about later, I did not feel that part. And I didn’t really even necessarily enjoy the fact that I had to learn a new tool, but it grew on me. And then secondly, I would say the way that it grew on me was that I became very aware of having to streamline my thoughts as it related to answering the questions that were posed to me and also interacting with my classmates on their questions. So naturally, I’m a bit more verbose in being an instructor and also being a vocalist. And so it really informed me to streamline my thinking and to get to the point and to be a little bit more aware and conscious of time as I speak. So thank you,

Karen Jackson:

Brenden. You’re next?

Brenden Kee:

Yes. Greetings everyone. Glad to see all who are here. I believe we have 44 members in this group. Again, my name is Brenden Key and I am a student within the leadership studies department in North Carolina, agriculture and Technical State University. Additionally, this is not my first time using GoReact. I have used it in the educational space before, but I’ve also used it in my professional space as a principal for a school here in North Carolina. I’ve had the opportunity to work with teachers through edTPA A or educated prep programs as well as the students and teachers here at the school. So I enjoy GoReact. I think it’s an amazing opportunity for feedback. It’s an amazing opportunity for growth and development, and it allows us as students and as professionals to have conversations without being in the same room. So I believe that piece all in itself is what has given me the opportunity to speak to you all today, but also given me the experience and expertise that I have with the platform. Thank you all for allowing me to be here with you all today.

Karen Jackson:

Kenyato.

Kenyato Lewis:

All right. Thank you Dr. Jackson. And greetings, everyone. My name is Kenyata Lewis. I go by Keon for short, and I bring you greetings from Charlotte, North Carolina. I’m a second year PhD student in the leadership studies program. And one of the things that I can say from my experience with Gora, this is actually the second course that I’ve had the opportunity to be exposed to the software. And I’ve definitely enjoyed it because each professor has utilized it differently and the things that I’ve enjoyed about seeing it and interacting with it within Dr. Jackson’s course is something that Pamela highlighted. Just getting a chance to hear from everyone else, hear from your fellow cohort members and colleagues just on their thought process, how they feel about certain things. And I think it gives you an opportunity to really see their emotions conveyed into it, but to also expand your definition or your awareness and your learning on the topic as well as the chapters that we’ve read. And so it is real cool to be able to sit back to listen, but to also to be able to comment and spark some dialogue and create some more conversations as a result of the topic. But I definitely see benefits in it. I’m looking forward to continuing this panel discussion and highlighting and underscoring some of those pros and cons from it, but I’ve benefited from it as a student and I’m looking forward to continuing utilizing it throughout the course of my studies. Thank you.

Karen Jackson:

And last but not least, Stephanie.

Stephanie Mayer:

Thank you, Dr. Jackson, and good day to all. My name is Stephanie Mayer and I am a student as well in the leadership studies program at North Carolina a and t. And my work centers around emotional wellness and mental health. I come from a background of serving in schools, faith-based organizations, as well as community spaces. I’ve used Gore Act with clients in my counseling courses as well as the current leadership course. And for the most part, GoReact has worked very well with what I do, and I haven’t had any significant issues thus far. And I will say that GoReact has enhanced my experience by allowing me to reflect not just on what I’m saying, but also how I’m saying it. And again, as someone who works in mental health and the wellness field, we try to pay close attention to tone to body language as well as presence. So GoReact has helped me to become more mindful of how I communicate as a leader, as a professional, and as a student. And thank you all for giving me this time to share.

Karen Jackson:

Thank you, Stephanie. So as you can see, we’ve got very diverse and I feel like wise group of panelists here today. And so we’ll jump in and ask into the first theme. And again, these themes came of conversations we had in preparation for this panel discussion. So I’m really excited for each of the panelists to share their responses to the question. So the first question is, what can a discussion question hour on GoReact look like? How would you envision a discussion question hour improving the community building experience for the course? And so any panelists can jump in or we can go in the order that we did introductions. So Pamela was first.

Pamela Baker:

Yes, and I’m glad I’m first because I’m so excited about this question. Excuse me. As we were planning for our time here today, we landed really at a place where the discussion questions that Dr. Jackson gives to us, we are going in recording and then our fellow students are reacting. What I expressed and what one other young lady expressed who really helped to craft out this discussion question hour, is that we were not particularly feeling as though GoReact had helped us with the community building aspect of why Dr. Jackson did this, right? And so we just lit out on this idea of how could we really look at community building and what she really meant for this to be, and this concept of the discussion question hour where we could all come together and be on GoReact really at the same time, providing almost real time feedback. That was so exciting to me because I really enjoy the aspect of talking back and forth to all of these leaders and all of the students and reading what or listening to their GoReacts, and then maybe the way that we went in and typed in our response, that just to me lit me up with the idea that I could be in the session with everybody at the same time. I’m really excited to use the tool in that way.

Karen Jackson:

Thank you, Pamela. And I think a little bit of context for the audience is that our program is completely online, and so our students being able to get together and hear from each other is really a critical component for the program. So this idea, which is at this point, just an idea of how can we shift from the kind of asynchronous way that we were doing discussions, which is everybody just kind of went in on their own time and did it, which meant if Pamela answered her discussion question today and Brenden went in three days later to answer his, it would mean Pamela would have to come back later to be able to interact with Brenden. But if we established a set time where folks were expected to come in and do it more in synchronous manner, that that might be a little bit more exciting for this group. So anyone else want to respond to this question? Any other panelists?

Stephanie Mayer:

Yes. I would say also that I really like this idea from the standpoint that the goal would be to, again, to create an open dialogue. And I kind of think about it as something similar to a virtual round table, if you will. And in my view, I think that this format would help to build trust as well as vulnerability for those who are open to that and allowing students to be able to connect more in that manner.

Karen Jackson:

I love that. I love that. Stephanie, do we have any questions, Matt, yet in the chat or in the q and a?

Matthew Short:

Nothing at this point, but a great reminder that if panelists or attendees, excuse me, do have questions for our panelists, please feel free to throw those into the q and a tool in Zoom and we can pause at different points to answer those questions.

Karen Jackson:

Okay. So the next question for the panelists, and I would love for as many of you to respond to this one as possible. So how can GoReact expand into other areas outside of higher ed to create connection and safe digital spaces?

Brenden Kee:

Brenden, I can piggy back. You go ahead.

Kenyato Lewis:

No, I was just saying as someone whose background is in public health and as well as my fellow classmate and cohort member, Stephanie, being in mental health, I could definitely see the advantages of utilizing this tool, especially in the mental health space, because one of the key things with being in public health along with mental health is that civic and community engagement and creating those unique and innovative safe spaces for people to have dialogue and discussions around key topics. So when I think about from my standpoint and what I’ve been able to take part in with everything from the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention to other community aspects, I could see how a tool like this would be very beneficial in different types of focus groups, different groups with lived experiences, whether it’s around mental health, suicide prevention, best practices, advocacy measures. I could see a lot of opportunities in this because you may have people who may not feel comfortable doing it in person, but because you’ve got this digital space where we can do it and engage and interact, I can see this being a tool that could be part of helping shift that dialogue, but be able to advance the mission around mental health awareness and suicide prevention.

Karen Jackson:

Thanks,

Brenden Kee:

Keon. Brenda, also, to piggyback off of that, again, I am in the education space and as a teacher of teachers, we use it for discussion on what we see teachers do. So what our educators do in the district is they’ll record a video of how they teach, and we have what’s called look fors or things that we’re trying to see regarding the pedagogy of teaching. What are teachers doing properly? How do they have class management or the lack thereof, or how are they teaching a topic on education? This is great because the teachers, they can upload a video and we can create a discussion on whether it was positive or whether we need to some plus or delta kind of things. I also really think that this works well other than just a simple discussion post, because one, it can be a one-to-one conversation between a coach and the teacher.

That’s a safe space in itself. Everyone doesn’t have to know where the corrections need to be. Everyone doesn’t have to know where you might’ve fallen short or where you might have your own questions. And the benefit of this being a safe space is that it can stay between you two. Now, if it was a group or a class discussion, kind of like what we do, it can also be open to the whole cohort of teachers or individuals. So I think having that ability with GoReact is amazing. Secondly, as a coach in the education sector, there are timestamps that you can use. So sometimes if you upload a long video and someone says, well, you talked about this here, it was great or You did this here, it was, okay, well where at what point in the video, what time when does it need? What are you talking about? Well, with GoReact when the event happens. Exactly. You can pause the video and start typing what do you want to say and how you want to say it, which is amazing to me. So I think in the end when we’re talking about digital spaces, safe digital spaces, it being a one-on-one tool works amazing, but then also having that option to bring it into a broader spectrum of people, it works. It works for the whole class or it works for the whole cohort that you’re a part of.

Karen Jackson:

I love what you and Brenden, what you and Kendo are kind of raising up here. We know it’s a learning tool. We know it can be used either with individuals or one-on-one or small groups or maybe even larger groups. But the learning piece and the piece where you can, even in the mental health space, can use GoReact in a way to either support learning for cohort or to support prevention of mental health and wellness. I think it’s just incredible the diverse ways that this can be used. And that’s what I was hoping that we could highlight today. And I love Brenden, for you bringing out the functionality, the functionality of being able to, if there’s a spot in the video you can, that timestamp really helps us to figure out where was that and how can we then maybe share that if we want that piece shared out. Pamela, Stephanie, anything to add about the where others, other spaces where this can be used in a way that makes people feel safe and know that they’re safe and being able to share?

Stephanie Mayer:

Sure. I would like to add, this is one question in particular that I was very excited about. Again, going back into the mental health aspect of it, I’ve actually used GoReact in this space. I think that GoReact has tremendous potential in moving into this area. We used GoReact in our client sessions for counseling, my counseling courses, of course, with proper consent. And what we did was I invited my clients to record video. Some were more comfortable with video, some were more comfortable with audio. And so what we did was they basically shared how they felt before and after challenging conversations. And so through GoReact, we were able to make it a learning experience for clients as well as my supervisor and instructor and peers were able to make it a learning experience for me by giving feedback and also with assessments. And I’m sure we’ll address this later on, but I think it has tremendous potential for the wellness and mental health space.

Pamela Baker:

And I would just add as far as how newbie to this all, I have just picked up so many pieces of information that says to me in my classes, this would be a great tool for, so I’m an advisor in the department and also in my classes, I’m always tasking my students with giving some type of feedback I like and love for my students to have a voice in what we’re talking about. Specifically in my public administration class this semester, we are talking about a lot of the political environment and sometimes it is not maybe a safe space in the classroom for students to voice what they really think around these political issues. I’m a big mouth, I can talk about the political issues all day, but I realize that they are not maybe as safe. And I can see where GoReact would be such a tremendous tool to say to my students, go and use this tool. Think about what maybe you have read or we’ve talked about and add and do it as a discussion really around something that you may not have been comfortable doing in class. So I’m excited to use it in that way.

Karen Jackson:

Well, and Pamela, I think you bring up a good example of where the functionality of GoReact could position your students in the course to feel safe sharing their political ideas, because you can set it up to where they can share with each other, but you can also set it up where they can’t see each other’s responses. That way, if a student wasn’t comfortable, if they only wanted to share with you, you could set it up where they could just share their ideas with you. Or if it was a situation where folks were more comfortable, they could then share with each other. We do have a question I’d like to take right now, Brenden, it’s addressed to you about identifying areas of strengths in students’ videos. Do you provide them with a rubric or a specific criteria about what you’re looking for or before recording the videos? Or do you model for other students how to provide feedback for the lessons?

Brenden Kee:

Okay, so both, and I don’t know who gave that question to you. I was looking to see if there are any questions in the chat, but whoever asked the question, thank you for asking a question. I would like to say for the students and teachers that we have, use GoReact, Susanna, there it is. Okay. Hello, Susanna. Good, good. So for students and teachers who use GoReact, we do provide a rubric for them. And a lot of times in our course, Dr. Jackson provides a rubric for discussion. So that’s just what she wants in the discussion, how she wants to see things, which is perfect. It gives us a baseline on what we need to talk about. But in the education sector, it is important for us to model it too. So before getting started with the course or before speaking with the teachers, we go over a session all in itself on what React is and how it can be used.

And throughout the course, throughout the semester, throughout the year, if you have questions, we can go back and forth like that, but the students, they how to use GoReact because we kind of front load them with the tutorial, talking to them on how to use it and even with the teachers. And then the teachers are then coaches for the students, and then we’re coaches for the teachers, if that makes sense. It’s kind of a pyramid thing there. So yes, both and we do both. We give a rubric and we also model what could be used, how the discussion should go, and then if there are any discrepancies moving forward throughout the year, they have all ability to ask questions moving forward. Thank you, Brenda. Question, Susanna.

Karen Jackson:

Thank you, Brenda. And thank you Susanna, for your question. We have two more segments that we’d like to cover before our time together is over. But before we go there, I thought it might be helpful for the audience to see a discussion prompt that we use in our leadership for Civic and community engagement class before we talk about challenges and then talk about artificial intelligence. So let me share my screen. And so this is an example of a discussion prompt. This was for module six. It says, discuss areas of your identity, where you possess systemic privilege and how these identities impact your personal approach to leading community engaged research, including your discussion strategies of using discussions on othering justice and equity and application to community transformation. So big question, but at this point in the semester, students would have read multiple case studies and had discussions about many of the topics that are a part of this discussion prompt. So at this point, our discussions are getting a lot more in depth and a lot richer, a lot more rich as they

Pamela Baker:

Lead. So we see Dr. Jackson is frozen right now, but I think where she was going, and she would probably jump back in and say that by this time we had gone through several discussions. We had read several maybe books and

Karen Jackson:

Am I back yet? Am I back?

Matthew Short:

Yes, I can hear you, Dr. Jackson.

Karen Jackson:

Okay, I’m sorry. I don’t know. I’m in a hotel in Chicago right now, so hopefully I’m at another conference. Oh, you’re

Matthew Short:

Coming in loud and clear right now. So hopefully just the temporary hiccup there.

Karen Jackson:

Gotcha. Thank you. And Pamela was exactly right. I could hear her stepping in for me. Thank you, Pamela. She was, that is exactly where I was going. So just wanted to share a prompt so you guys could see into the lives of the students in this class. Before we go to the next question, which is about challenges. So when students don’t love GoReact, what do they say and how can we change their minds? Is the next question. Who wants to start?

Brenden Kee:

Yes, I want to go on now just a little bit if I can. I know we got some other panelists, but before I answer the question, do you mind if I ask if anyone has had any challenges in GoReact? And if you have, can you post ’em in the chat, raise your hand, wave anything. If you’ve had any challenges, go over a couple of them while we’re here. The biggest challenge that I’ve faced with using GoReact is the mobile usage. If I’m using it on an iPad or using it on my phone, it’s hard to upload videos in the space. It is very user-friendly or a computer or a desktop space, or if you’re trying to record from a phone or a tablet, it’s rough. It can be, and I’ve experienced some of my students saying that, some of my teachers saying that, well, I want to record how I’m teaching using my phone, and it’s not allowing me to upload because either the file is too big, thank you, Amanda, the files are too big, or it’s just no space.

Well, I don’t want to come to you with a problem and not have a solution. So in our conversations in getting prepared for this discussion, we spoke about just recording the video and uploading it straight to react as a file. And if you don’t have a desktop computer or a laptop, you can save those files onto an iPad or you can create a discussion post and maybe link it, say you have a YouTube video, you can link it in the discussion. So that kind of helps with that process from my perspective. I see Pam’s up next. Go ahead.

Pamela Baker:

Well, I got kicked out, so I’m not quite sure where we are.

Karen Jackson:

Yeah, so we’re on the question, Pamela, about challenges. And so when students don’t love it, what do they say and how can we change their minds?

Pamela Baker:

Well, I am one of the students that didn’t love it, and you and many of my colleagues have been saying things to help change my mind. So this is perfect. I am very much a person who loves technology, love, love, love it. And I think that when I got to GoReact, I came to it really thinking to myself, is there another way? And maybe I heard Brenden talking about this at the end. Is there another solution? Is there another tool that’s already being that I already used could do the same thing? So I had to move myself along the spectrum and say, even if there is, this is the tool that you have. And it really was about me and not the tool. It was about me taking the time to learn the tool, to learn the functionality, to understand what was the real purpose and goal. And once I did that, I think that it was more about just digging in, learning, growing, and listening for sure, as I alluded to previously, I just had to look at that time, that clock that would show up.

Karen Jackson:

And isn’t it half the battle sometimes I think sometimes I think we think because it’s technology and technology is such an integral part of our lives now that it should be easy. But I think the more we’ve dug into this conversation as a group that we’ve learned from each other, that talking about it matters, giving yourself grace when things are frustrating and asking for help when you need help, all of those things still matter, even though technology is an integral part of our lives. I know we are getting close to time, and I don’t want to miss out on the very last question. Did anybody have anything else they wanted to say about challenges right now?

Okay, so the very last question is the one that really excites me. All of it excites me, but when we started to dig into how to integrate into the course both GoReact and generative ai, I got excited because I’ve been doing some other types of training on how to implement AI into my course. So the students, it’s kind of challenged me with some of the questions they asked to go into using some of the prompt ways to prompt AI to help me think about assignments for this course. So I want to quickly share, and I did see another question in the chat. I don’t want the person to know that, Amy, we do see your question and we’ll come back to it in just a minute. But I do want to share at least one of these assignments that I was able to get generative AI to share with me because I’m really excited to integrate this into this course when I teach it again in the fall.

So I went to generative AI and I gave it my course description and I shared with it the outcomes for the course. And I also shared some information about the students and the expectations of the students in both the course as well as the program so that they would know what type of, it’s a graduate doctoral program. And so this was one of the assignments that AI returned for me. So an AI assisted presentation development and feedback. So the assignment is students use gen ai such as chat GBT to help draft an outline or a script for a leadership focused presentation. And then the activity would be after refining their script, they record their presentation on GoReact. The integration is peers and the instructor provide feedback using Gore ACT’s, timestamped comments, while students can also use AI to analyze their own speaking patterns, clarity and content.

And then I’ll share one more before we go into the final questions for the session. Actually, there are six on the slides. So I think you guys do have access to the slides if any of the participants are interested in seeing the others. The other assignments that I got from Gen ai. So this one is about ethical dilemmas in leadership, AI versus human analysis. Again, remember, this is a civic and community engagement course. We are interested in the human element, the community building element. So this assignment is students explore case study on ethical leadership and decision making. Step one, use GI to generate different leadership responses to case study scenarios. Step two, students record their own ethical response using GoReact justifying why their approach is better or different from AI generated responses. Peers in the instructor provide feedback on the depth of analysis and ethical reasoning. So I’m really excited to think more and to think a little bit more deeply, even get feedback from my students on which of these scenarios that AI has generated for me might be most interesting to use in my course in the fall now that they’ve experienced the course. So we have five minutes left, Matt and McKayla. I think there are is at least one question out there that we’ve not responded to. We’d like to get to that.

Matthew Short:

Yeah, absolutely. So Cheryl Holden has asked, how do you see AI assisting with the RSI policies,

Karen Jackson:

RSI being, I don’t know what that is.

Matthew Short:

Yeah, Cheryl, if you wouldn’t mind either in the chat or in the q and a, just expanding that abbreviation just so we’re all on the same page. Routines. Routines. There you go. You got it. Oh,

Karen Jackson:

Okay. So in the courses that I’ve been taking on AI and using it to provide feedback to students, I feel like it’s helpful in maybe, I don’t know if this is answering your question, but you’re saying it’s a policy and I don’t know about this policy. Can she come off mute and talk? I don’t.

Matthew Short:

Let’s see. I’m not sure.

Karen Jackson:

Yeah, because not sure about a policy. I know I have to that interacting with students providing substantive feedback, AI can help with that, but you need to be careful in the types of prompts. But I’m not sure about a policy.

Matthew Short:

It looks like Makay was able to upgrade Cheryl to a panelist. Cheryl, can you hear us all right?

Speaker 7:

I can.

Matthew Short:

Excellent. Yes, if you wouldn’t mind elaborating for Dr. Jackson, the panelist on your question.

Speaker 7:

So the policy is driven by HLC in higher education and it’s really been a burdensome challenge for faculty who teach online. And so it’s part of that approval process and higher education that we have to be able to provide evidence where we’ve had interaction with the student. It has to be routine, it has to be substantial. It can’t be congrat. You scored a hundred percent on the exam or automated

Karen Jackson:

Feedback. Oh, okay. Okay. I’m with you. I’m with now. So I think for this course and for the courses that I teach in this program that even before we were integrating technology like GoReact or Gen ai, that I’m still as a faculty member, and I’d love for Pamela to chime in here too. I haven’t really changed the ways within which I give feedback. I have just started to use AI to help me generate rubrics or to help me to review student work and provide feedback, but the feedback still comes from me. So at this point, I don’t know how this policy, I guess if there was someone who was completely dependent upon AI for responding to students, that would be one thing. But I really haven’t changed my approach in how I provide feedback other than using AI to help me in thinking about what types of feedback to give.

Pamela Baker:

So

Where I would add there, Cheryl, and I think your original assessment of it being burdensome is correct. And I would say the way that I have used it and the way that our department has quasi required it, but not really because I was doing it before like Dr. Jackson was saying. But what has happened is when you talk about online and like you’re saying, not just giving that grade and Oh yes, you passed this test or quiz, but we are having to connect the way that we interact so that it does go directly to substantive. So when my chair came to us and said, Hey, what we are requiring of you is that you have a writeup of some kind about your interactions with your online classes so that we can see it, you have to turn it in. And that did add a part that you could use AI to help you, because a lot of it was based on the student’s writing or their interaction and discussion boards and that sort of thing. And so I would take some of their writing as in aggregate really, and put it into AI and give me really a jumping off point to my ability to say, here is what I did. If that makes sense.

Speaker 7:

Yes. And I appreciate your feedback and my program’s small enough to where I connect with the students. I mean, it’s specific feedback to that student, but I do understand other faculty that are used to using a generated rubric or score or having problems when they’ve got 68 students in a class.

Karen Jackson:

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much, Cheryl, for your question. I know we’re at time, Matt, and I know that there are other great sessions coming up after this one. Just real quick to Amy, Amy, I don’t know about the cost, but I’m sure Matt or Michaela can probably talk with you more about managing cost in non-academic spaces.

Matthew Short:

Yeah, absolutely. Amy, thank you so much for your comment. And also to your point, just acknowledging or calling out the fact that GoReact is not exclusively a tool in the higher ed space. It also has practical implications or use cases within even beyond the confines of higher education. So I’m glad this session shared some of that perspective as well. And Amy, we can definitely follow up with you to kind of discuss your particular use case, what you’re envisioning for the product, and see what we can work with you on. So I would just like to take a moment to thank the panelists here today, Jackson, Stephanie, Brenden, Keon, Pamela, your insights, your experience have been so valuable to the attendees that join here today. Again, sharing how this tool has benefited you within your coursework, but also within your respective fields beyond the confines of the classroom. So thank you so much for sharing that with the audience here today.

Karen Jackson:

Thank you for the opportunity and hope everybody has a good rest of the conference.

Pamela Baker:

Yes, thank you

Karen Jackson:

All. And I thank you. Great students. Amazing students in our program for

Kenyato Lewis:

Being here. Thank you, Dr. Jackson, for this

Karen Jackson:

Opportunity. Yes, absolutely. We’ll see you again.