Enhancing Learning Beyond the Classroom

Matthew Short:

Hello, and welcome to our webinar today. We are thrilled that you have joined us and hope that you enjoy today’s presentation and walk away prepared to inspire your students and make a positive impact on their careers.

My name is Matthew Short, and I’m on the GoReact client Success team. For those of you who aren’t familiar with GoReact, we’re a competency-based video assessment and feedback solution used primarily across campuses in the United States and the United Kingdom. I will be facilitating today’s presentation, which is about enhancing learning beyond the classroom, with our special guest, Alison Lewis, senior instructional designer with the University of Alabama.

Before we begin today’s presentation, I’ll run through a few points of housekeeping. Today’s event will last about 45 minutes. This includes 30 minutes of presentation and about 10 to 15 minutes for questions and answers. We are recording today’s presentation, so if you do need to hop off before we finish or you want to share the recording with a colleague, we will share the recording following today’s session.

We do want today’s presentation to be as interactive as possible, so throughout the presentation, please feel free to submit your questions. To submit questions, please use the Q&A function within Zoom. We’ll answer as many questions as we have time for. You’ll also notice a chat function. Please use this to introduce yourself, tell us what school you are with, and if you have any links or relevant resources to share with other attendees, please do so in the chat section. And if you do experience any technical difficulties, please use the chat feature to reach out.

Without any further ado, let’s go ahead and get started. Thank you, Alison, for joining us today for this conversation. GoReact is delighted to have clients like you utilizing our technology to extend learning beyond the classroom. Let’s start with you sharing a little bit more about yourself, Alison.

Alison Lewis:

Thank you, Matt. I have been with the University of Alabama for a little over 10 years now as a instructional designer. Part of our role is to work closely with the instructors to develop a Quality online course. We have an internal media team, accessibility team, and a copyright team that we also work with to produce the Quality online course.

Matthew Short:

Excellent. Thank you for that, Alison. So we’re here today to talk about challenges and opportunities of giving students an easy way to learn outside of the classroom. Tell us a bit about the programs at the University of Alabama online that you have worked with through this particular challenge and opportunity.

Alison Lewis:

Okay. Well, I’ve been here so long. I’ve worked with almost every college in UA Online. They each present their own challenges and opportunities. Many of the various programs in UA online have labs, clinical experiences, field work, and those challenges to find creative ways to ensure the student is obtaining the same experience that in the online environment that the on-campus student is. Part of our responsibility is also to understand working with the professor, their style, their level of participation, that they’re willing to commit, determines the types of tools and programs that we can incorporate into our online courses.

Matthew Short:

Excellent, excellent. So speaking of tools or resources that potentially are being leveraged within those opportunities, let’s segue into GoReact. How did you first discover our product within the context of your work with the University of Alabama?

Alison Lewis:

Well, the first stage of our process is getting with the instructor and understanding the pain points of their course. And I will give two examples that I’ve primarily worked with and introduced me to GoReact. And one was a nursing program where the physical assessments needed some improvement as far as efficiency, uploading for student video, instructor feedback, and then also, I was working with an instructor who was charge of student teaching out in the field. And there were some issues there that needed addressing about uploading video for accountability and things like that. So during research for these, we came across GoReact tool for those two situations.

Matthew Short:

Gotcha, gotcha. And as you were looking at GoReact, what were some of the features or use cases with our product that you were most interested in as it pertained to some of those challenges with the nursing program and teacher education program with the online experience?

Alison Lewis:

Students being able to upload or submit their video, and then instructor feedback on those particular videos. And specifically, at certain timestamps. As instructional designers, we have to look at the big picture. So finding that tool that fits their need, but also understanding if there’s an external tech support, maintenance from rolling from shell to shell, and the live, the LMS for live courses. And archiving is a big one too because we actually use the GoReact platform. So understanding how long our video lives in GoReact was extremely important to understand for these two particular situations as well.

Matthew Short:

Excellent, excellent. And while we’re on the topic of some of the features or tools within our system that were selling points or critical to your particular objectives and goals, we do want to post a poll for our attendees here today.

So within Zoom, you’re going to see a poll hopefully pop up right on your screen that’s going to ask you about what tools for assessing and providing feedback would be most valuable to you within the context of your program. So for those attendees, take a moment to take a look at the options and see which one of those feedback options is mission-critical to what you’re potentially looking for that would be valuable within the context of your program. So we’ll give folks just a minute here to respond.

All right. Perfect. And it looks like everybody’s had a chance to respond. So looking at the results here, looks like we had about a third of the folks say all of the above. So a lot of those items highlighted in the poll were mission-critical to your particular institutions. Another one, rubrics was also heavy. Make sense. We want to make sure we’re evaluating or assessing. And if skill-based activities, using a consistent instrument. Assignment templates, always good to have something you can leverage to rinse and repeat and expedite that value that you see by having something preset. And video recording and playback as featured, noted by Alison as far as having that video to reference and the feedback directly embedded in there. So we appreciate everybody’s participation in that poll right there, and that gives us useful context for today’s session.

So Alison, back to you. So tell us about some of the ways the departments were instructing prior to having GoReact within your online program.

Alison Lewis:

For the nursing program, the physical assessments, the instructors were actually using about a six-page Word document. And I think it was taking hours and hours of time for one student. They have four physical assessments per semester. And the time log they were putting into that was incredible. So that was a definite pain point. The other problem is they were all submitting the videos in different ways. There was no consistency in how those videos were being submitted or what tools they were using to submit the videos. The instructor having to refer and write down the timestamp of exactly where the problem might be in that physical assessment.

So those were all things that we talked about in our initial meeting of trying to find a tool that would just address all these pain points they were having. And as far as the student teaching and the education program, they were relying primarily on the mentor to give them feedback and understand whether they were doing a good job. Of course, they were turning in their lesson plans, but not actually witnessing anything was an accountability problem and a certification problem. So from that standpoint, they were able to give better feedback because they were actually seeing the student and not having to rely on a mentor that might be the person’s in-law possibly, in some situations. So it was a tremendous tool for them to use as well for that.

Matthew Short:

Perfect. Perfect. Absolutely. And in your experience working with faculty and students, how have they adapted to utilizing GoReact? How has that experience been incorporating the tool from instructor and student perspective?

Alison Lewis:

It is been great. They’ve been using the tool now, both these programs, for a little over seven years. And being user user-friendly is something we really have to look at from the student side and the instructor side. The nursing program’s actually been pulling in more courses to use GoReact, extending to discussions, with not just the physical assessments, but discussions as well. There’ve been very few challenges. And any challenges that have come up for either program, GoReact has been great to address those directly with the student or the instructor.

Matthew Short:

Wonderful. Wonderful. Have any other departments begun using GoReact? And if so, tell us about how they’re using it and what their challenges were before incorporating the tool within their coursework.

Alison Lewis:

Yeah, so it’s my understanding that the College of Communications here is wanting to adapt GoReact into their courses, primarily for job interview experience for the student-to-student peer review, and even presentations.

So having that platform that is consistent with all the students and with the ease of use was very interesting to them, or attractive is a better word, for them, and as well as being able to add that instructor feedback. But I do know that they were big into student-to-student peer review because they felt like they could learn so much from each other in that situation.

Matthew Short:

Absolutely. Absolutely. From your standpoint, do you see opportunities for other departments to use GoReact? And if so, which departments and what type of learning activities, exercises, engagements do you potentially see value in including video skill assessment tools such as GoReact?

Alison Lewis:

Yes. So GoReact has the small group live sessions and I have found that the programs that are already using GoReact have pulled that in, because if there are issues with two or three students, it’s a way for them to have access to their GoReact account, but also be in the live session with those to pinpoint those issues.

I just worked on a interpersonal relationship course, and we’re working towards GoReact in that course. Because of the discipline, there’s different paths the students can take. So these small group live sessions can actually be used as group sessions for particular topics that the student that belong in that path, the student wants to take, as well as a presentation and as well as discussions. So when we incorporate these tools into our online courses, we love to be able to use it in more than one way. So we want to get the most used out of the tools. So in this particular course that we’re working on right now, it’d be three different ways they could use GoReact, which is a plus also for the student purchasing the use of the tool.

Matthew Short:

Excellent. From your work or efforts, do you have any results, whether it’s quantifiable or maybe just anecdotal on how GoReact has improved student outcomes from its integration into your coursework?

Alison Lewis:

So our department’s not really privy to a lot of that information, but what we are privy to is the success that the instructors and the students have using the tool. And just the standalone fact that the two programs that was introduced to seven years ago is still using it and have picked up even some of the new features in GoReact, means a lot, means that it is successful. And whether it’s for efficiency time sake, student outcomes, the big picture is all better with GoReact too.

Matthew Short:

Excellent. What about how has it helped instructors in their efforts within their courses? What benefits or values have they expressed or shared with you on what was realized or afforded to them based on using the tool?

Alison Lewis:

Well, I think for the physical assessment situation, everything was just so much more clear. The time stamp, that comment is left right at that time stamp. So students not having to go back and forth to read from a document to go to the video. So clarity is one thing. And I would say that’s for both the student teaching class, the Department of Education. She used the markers, and they have those positive reflective comments, and she has her marker set up. So every time they hit one in their student teaching, she just hits that marker, and it automatically shows right there.

So that’s positive feedback for the students saying, ‘Okay, I got my three markers in for this and I got my two markers in for this.’ So that’s made it an easy way for her to grade certain aspects of the student teaching, which is all a positive thing as well.

Matthew Short:

Yeah, it definitely sounds like hopefully a lot of time has been saved with those efficiencies, with the tagging, the comments, and also markers, those programmatic pieces of feedback, instead of typing the same thing multiple times. I’m clicking a button, and it’s automatically tagged in there. Hopefully instructors, at the very least, that time saving is a huge benefit to them and just the incredible pace-filled world that we are in where everything needs to be done yesterday, so hopefully that is valuable time back in their hands.

Alison Lewis:

That’s right.

Matthew Short:

So from your perspective, I think we’ve hit on a couple of the features, but from your perspective, what are the top features within GoReact that you feel are really driving success within the University of Alabama online when this tool is incorporated within?

Alison Lewis:

Well, obviously the instructor-to-student feedback was one of the initial reasons we needed GoReact for those first few problems that we were addressing. The ease of, excuse me, uploading the video. So many of these students now use the mobile app. And I know that both those programs have gone from using the laptop. And we only put in the mobile app instructions down, because it’s an automatic upload to GoReact.

That was an easy way to have consistency with the students. One set of directions, one housing of the vide. The student-to-student peer review is becoming more and more into play. I know that the student teaching and the physical assessments course both use discussions for GoReact as well, whether it be research-based or possibly just participation-based on experience that they’re having. So student-to-student is big as well. And just being able to offer that accountability with that upload of the video has been a huge part of how we’ve used GoReact as well.

Matthew Short:

Excellent. Excellent. All right, so we’re going to take another brief pause here for another poll within our session. So the poll question you’ll see here, how does your program assess work relevant skills in students’ work? So there’ll be a poll pop up on your screen here. So just take your time, respond to which one you think best matches your particular response for this question. We’ll give you folks a moment just to fill that in. And once it’s done, I will share those results here for the audience.

All right, and I see we’ve got a decent smattering across the board here. So it looks like about a third of our attendees, pen and paper tests, another third, digital tests, video-based assessment, and then all of the above coming in from a attendee or two as well here. And thankfully, none of the above was not responded to at all. So that is always good to see. We appreciate you contributing to that poll here, just to showcase that within your institutions.

All right. So Alison, with the spotlight on skills and the pressure on higher ed institutions to help ensure students have the skills needed for work and life once they’ve completed their education, what role do you see GoReact playing in that skill development from what you’ve seen at the University of Alabama online?

Alison Lewis:

Well, offering those students that real life experience is what it’s all about. Because the more that we can offer them those real life experience, when they really do take that job or step into their new career, they will have something to fall back on where they’ve actually experienced what they’re doing. And the physical assessments and the student teaching are both offering those students those real life experiences.

For the future courses that pick it up for job interviews or presentations, all of that also lends to the real life experience. And I feel like the more that we can offer these students that real life experience, the better off they’re going to be when they first take that first job or even continuing on in a career that they’ve already been in.

Matthew Short:

Absolutely. Absolutely. So at this particular point, we’re getting close to our question and answer section of our session here today. But before we open it up for attendees to post questions, and for those that are on, please feel free to use that Q&A resource within Zoom to post any questions. I’m happy to pose those to Alison here for today’s session.

But Alison, from your perspective, any other final thoughts you want to share related to enhancing learning beyond the classroom based on your experience, and maybe not just necessarily GoReact, but just any final thoughts to leave our attendees here today with from your perspective?

Alison Lewis:

Well, I would like to make a comment, it’s stepping away a little bit from the topic, but I wanted to express how thrilled we’ve been with GoReact’s tech support. Because the whole world is about problem solving, and our internal tech support will not address external resources or tools that our students use in our courses. So therefore, we have to rely on that tools, their internal tech support. And if the tool doesn’t have a good tech support, guess who they’re going to come to? Either the instructor or me.

So I just wanted to give a shout-out to the tech support there because it is been detrimental to the success of us using this tool, because they do solve the problems and work directly with students and the instructors, and that’s a great thing. The less problems you have, the more motivation and excitement the students have about using the tool. If you full of problems and nobody’s answering, you get frustrated. So I just wanted to give GoReact a plug on their tech support there.

Matthew Short:

Well we certainly appreciate that, and I’ll make sure our support team gets this part of the recording, so they can receive those kudos. And by all means, we never want a student or an instructor to feel like that they have to solve their own problems. We definitely want to be a resource, we want to be available to support them. The hard part of this process should be that learning from that experiential moment. It should not be the tool that you’re using to conduct or complete or go through that process. Learning is challenging enough, we don’t want to add any technology issues to that equation. So we appreciate the shout out there, Alison.

So at this point we’ll just start to open up for our question and answer session here. So again from our audience, please don’t be shy. Please feel free to submit any questions you have, whether it’s for Alison with her experience with University Alabama online utilizing tool or about the product itself. We’re happy to field those questions.

Alison, while we give folks a chance to post any questions in the chat or the question and answer tool, from your perspective, particularly with your online, whether it’s fully online or hybrid, do you feel that GoReact has, through its inclusion, and I know you mentioned before some of those student-to-student feedback scenarios. Do you feel like the tools help reinforce almost a classroom feel or a community learning environment through some of those shared activities, where it’s not just like I’m off in my office all by my lonesome doing my video submitting to help enforce or reinforce, instill is the word I’m looking for, that sense of that learning community around them?

Alison Lewis:

Yeah, absolutely. And one of the first complaints you hear is that a student doesn’t feel like they’re part of a community if you don’t have any kind of video in the course as far as student-to-student. So it definitely, and we became more mindful of making sure there were those opportunities for the online students years back because of that complaint. They felt like they really didn’t know who the classmates were. They never got to meet them. There may not be any group work, so they didn’t have an opportunity to interact.

Yes, they’re answering discussions in the LMS Black… We use Blackboard, Blackboard section, but they’re not really getting to know someone. So the video discussions and student-to-student peer review, those type things have really added to that community feel, as well as giving that instructor the outlet. Students want to know who their instructor is too. So giving them that small group session allows the student to know the instructor and see the instructor, know the exist. So all of those things, GoReact supports, and it definitely adds to the online environment and necessities for the students to feel successful and part of a community.

Matthew Short:

Excellent. And in that same vein, do you know or do you see, whether it’s students or instructors, leveraging either the video feedback option or the voice note feedback option? In that same vein. I feel like typically you see the text-based feedback, it’s time stamped, but do you feel that folks are leveraging some of those more visual or audiovisual components to have that maybe personal touch or ‘Hey, I don’t see you very often, let me do a video recording of my feedback showing my face.’ Do you get that sense that folks include that it within the feedback they’re offering, whether it’s instructor to student or student to student?

Alison Lewis:

I do. And years ago, that wasn’t happening so much, but I think as instructors are getting used to using these types of tools, even in the LMS, I believe they are making a point to maybe have even some Zoom sessions if GoReact’s not in the course, to make sure the student knows I’m here. Here are my office hours, but I’m here.

And I think they’ve had to get used to that a little bit, but because the students needed to see that instructor, we had to make it happen. That is something. But now if the student, I’m sorry, if the course is using GoReact, it’s an automatic easy way to have that instructor involved with the students in that GoReact area, or whether it’s live session or leaving feedback or that kind of thing, or even the introduction discussion. It’s a great way for the instructor to leave their introduction video in the GoReact section.

Matthew Short:

Absolutely, absolutely. Perfect. So at this particular point, we’ll just pause for another moment here to see if anybody has any last questions that they would like to pose for Alison or for myself if it’s more directly tied to GoReact features or functionalities here. So just checking Q&A and also double-checking the chat real quickly.

All right. So at this point, I’ll keep an eye on it just in case anything pops up, but I’m not seeing any additional questions at this point. So at this juncture, I just want to stop and thank you Alison just for a moment here. Thank you for the excellent experience discussion that you have shared with us. I know that it’s generated some thoughts in my head as far as how video skill assessment tools incorporated within that online environment can be beneficial to students, instructors, and potentially student-to-student peer engagement as well. You’ve provided a lot of valuable information and shared a lot of takeaways that I feel like from your experience that can benefit those that have attended here today.

We’d also like to take a moment and thank our attendees for joining us and making this an interactive presentation. We definitely appreciate your questions, taking the time out of your day to listen in for this particular discussion. And before we end, I do want you all to have your calendars marked for April 10th and April 11th. GoReact will be hosting our third annual ReAction virtual conference. It’s the skill development conference that you won’t want to miss, and it’s all free. We will soon post information and share that with our clients about registering for the conference. So please keep an eye out for communication in the near future on that and we do hope to see you at ReAction. But at the very least, as far as for now, we appreciate you joining here today.

Thank you again, Alison, so much for sharing information with our clients and our attendees here today, and we hope you all have a fantastic rest of your week here.