Why Every Higher Ed Institution Is Adopting Video Assessment

Hillary Gamblin:

Hello, thank you for joining today’s workshop. My name is Hillary Gamblin. I’m a GoReact employee. For the past few years, most of the pandemic, I’ve had the pleasure of hosting workshops and interviewing incredible faculty and people from higher ed organizations. Today I’m delighted to share some of those stories and research and ingenuity specifically about video assessment. Before we jump right in, let me quickly explain how we structured these virtual events. For the first 30 minutes, I’m going to share some clips, professors from various disciplines and from all over the world about using video assessment. Traditionally afterwards, we do a live Q&A for about 10 to 15 minutes because we love audience participation, but because of today’s unique format, we’re actually going to be giving a lot of those answers and questions directly in the chat. So if you have a question, please use the Q&A, and we will try answering those directly.

Hillary Gamblin:

If we can’t answer those directly in the Zoom, then we will follow up with you after the workshop. I would like to draw your attention to the chat feature in Zoom. You need to click on it and have it pop out. I draw your attention to it because this is where attendees, a lot of stuff happens here. Usually they share resources, they exchange personal information so they can get in touch after the workshop. So, I really encourage you to take advantage of the chat feature and be part of the chat party. I think that we’ve gone over the basic structure of the events. So I want to start off today’s workshop by getting to know a little bit about you who are participating today. So we’re going to do a quick poll.

Hillary Gamblin:

The polling question that’s going to show up on your screen is, what is your experience with video assessment? We have, I’ve heard of it, or I’m interested in learning more about it. Our program, our campus is looking into it or investing in it. And then our program, it currently uses it. So those are the options. We want to get an idea of where you guys sit, so we can better tailor our information to you today to make sure that we’re making sure that you get everything that you can get out of this workshop. Okay. It looks pretty split. It looks like we have, well, the numbers are changing as I see them, but about half it looks like are interested in, have heard of it. And half of us, the others are users. So that’s perfect. That’s great to know. Fantastic.

Hillary Gamblin:

Okay. With that in mind, for those who are interested and maybe want to learn more about it, I’m going to give you a little background. Those who use it, bear with me for a few seconds. Since the cam quarter academics have been in various disciplines, have explored and published the efficacy of recording students performing skills, at some point in our own lives, we probably experienced this ourselves, whether it’s a simple act of recording ourselves, doing a skill like skiing, playing the piano, giving a presentation. Watching ourselves do those things, heightens our objectivity, reflection and motivation for improvement. Video assessment is about building off of those decades of research. It takes that learning experience to the next level.

Hillary Gamblin:

There’s two ways that it does that. The first is that it makes recording and sharing easier, more secure and more accessible. No longer do you have to use cam portals or even just using YouTube, it can be a lot labor-intensive and a lot of work. And so video assessment software makes that easy. It makes it easy to do. The second thing that it does is that it integrates features that enhance the already inherent power of learning and reflection and engagement that video offers. So in the end, it can look something like this. (silence)

Hillary Gamblin:

This is video assessment. This is the tool that is becoming as ubiquitous as LMS. Today, we’re going to share how video assessment, no matter the discipline or language or country is the answer to helping students master skills. By the end of the workshop, we’re hoping that you’ll see the vast potential for video assessment. And then for those of you who are already using it, we’re hoping that the ideas and experiences that you are going to hear shared by colleagues around the world will give you some ideas for new features, new assignments and new ways to use video assessment in your courses, programs and campuses. So, that’s a tall order, but I think we can get it done. So to get started, today we’re actually going to start with the origin story of GoReact, because I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but GoReact was one of the pioneers of video assessment as a software.

Hillary Gamblin:

The birthplace of GoReact began during a very boring presentation, which I hope this is not one of those. So about 10 years ago, Dr. Bill Baker was trapped in what he said, “One of the most boring meetings of his life.” So I’m sure we’ve all had this experience, but your life starts to flash before your eyes as you’re just sitting in this meeting that’s just so boring. He started thinking of the 30 years of, he was helping students to give engaging communication and presentation. And he’s thinking, how can I make sure that this never happens again? So I don’t have to sit through one of these meetings again. That’s when GoReact was born, the idea of video assessment software. And so it’s no surprise that early on, communication majors, public speaking courses, business majors, and even those majoring in sales, recognize the power of video assessment to improve soft skills. So a great example of this, one of these disciplines is Dot Powell from the University of Warwick in England. So, we’re her Dot talk about her experience.

Dot Powell:

Director of teaching and learning enhancement at Warwick Business School. Our main interest in using GoReact is about developing presentation skills. So, business students at all levels need to present. We have large undergraduate cohort up to sort of 700 students per year and equally large post-graduate and MBA cohorts. Each of those needing to develop their presentation skills, because we know from research that businesses need the soft skills, as well as the knowledge and an understanding that we develop. So, I sort of latched on to GoReact probably three or four years ago before even thinking about things like the pandemic and the fact that what students need is to be able to see themselves present. That gives such a great sort of teachable moment, because if you can provide feedback at the point that they say something or make a gesture or look at the floor, then that’s the moment that you can really catch them. We found that with students to be a really effective

Hillary Gamblin:

Now Dot uses the term soft skills in here. When we often think of soft skills, we think of something intangible, difficult to observe and get feedback on, but Dot realized that with video assessment soft skills are tangible. Whether you record a student pitching a business plan, presenting a conference paper, or doing a role play of a job interview, videos allow students to practice, get feedback, and improve those soft skills. It wasn’t long before professors in the arts and languages began to use video assessment.

Hillary Gamblin:

I remember an early adopter was a conductor. He used GoReact in a conducting course. He would have his students record themselves, conducting a group of musicians, and then he would give them feedback. And then another professor, this is my personal favorite, was teaching a stage fighting class. He would have his students record themselves doing stage fighting, and he would give them feedback that way. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the first community to really embrace GoReact wholeheartedly was the American Sign Language community. Now, our customer base has grown to include languages from all over the world. Next we’re going to hear from Dr. Tockner Glova. She’s from the University of Vienna. She’s going to tell us about how she uses GoReact features for translation studies.

Dr. Tockner Glova:

I’m senior lecturer at the center for translation studies at the University of Vienna and I’m teaching conference interpreting in German and creation. At the moment when we ended up in the lockdown, it meant that we have to teach online. That was a quiet challenge for all of us because for teaching conference interpreting, we have well-equipped rooms onsite with conference interpreting equipment that we need to use. So the students know how it works, what the booth looks like and everything. But when it comes to teaching conference interpreting online, it means that we need to look for tools that allow us to meet the goals from our curriculum. We use different tools, also Zoom or other video conference tools, but we also use GoReact. GoReact is really a helpful tool. We use it I think for different assignments for students.

Dr. Tockner Glova:

Our main interest in using GoReact is in giving feedback to our students. For us, it is very important to listen to our students, parallel to the original speech. So, we need original speech and interpretation of our students to be able to assess their performance. That’s something that GoReact gave us as an option. We also use it in a combination with virtual conferences because GoReact has this option of live review. So it means that GoReact is a kind of virtual conference booth for our students who can interpret and they know. At the same time, there is someone out there listening to them. So it encourages them to give the best performance they can do at that moment and they know they’re going to get feedback.

Dr. Tockner Glova:

Feedback is very important. On the one side, GoReact, give us the option to give very individual feedback to everyone’s student. Time-coded means also that the student have the feedback in a context. Usually in a regular class, we do not interrupt our students when they’re interpreting. So it means we note down all the comments and give the comments and feedback afterwards. Now, every student can get individual comments and feedback time-coded. Afterwards, we also meet in the video conference for more general comments, and not for one student, but the comments about interpreting technique or other aspects of conference interpreting that are important for all of them.

Hillary Gamblin:

Both Dot and Dr. Glova focus on the power of providing students with timestamped feedback. Those feedback features are core of video assessment, whether it’s for soft skills or for hard skills. A great example of how it applies to hard skills is Dr. Dara Murray. She is at the University of West Alabama in the nursing program. So we’re going to hear how she uses GoReact for psychomotor skills.

Dr. Dara Murray:

The primary way that we use GoReact in our program is through the evaluation of skills. There are certain psychomotor skills that nursing students are expected to be competent in performing before they go into clinical setting and perform them on actual real life patients. So, that’s our primary use. We teach the skills and then the students use GoReact to go into our laboratory setting and they record themselves, they watch their video, they use a student rubric in GoReact to evaluate their self. So they do a self evaluation before they submit. That them an opportunity to grade themselves and identify mistakes that they’re making. And then they submit to us and we grade. We use it for physical assessment and few examples of the skills that we grade, physical assessment, IV catheter insertion, urinary catheter insertions.

Dr. Dara Murray:

That timestamp feedback, Dot mentioned the feedback, that’s been huge for us. When you’re evaluating a skill in person, face-to-face, and we did it that way for a long time, you don’t interrupt the student when they make a mistake. You let them finish the skill and then you try to go back and you try to talk about it after the fact and give them feedback. But to be able to pause that video at the moment that the error occurred and then be able to go back with that student, most of the time they see it themselves. They see that mistake and they realize what they did, and they’re able to go back and fix it on their own. But if they still don’t understand, that video gives me an opportunity as an instructor to pull it up and go over it with the student and say, “See right here, that’s where you contaminated your sterile field. That’s where you made a mistake, and let’s learn how to fix that.”

Hillary Gamblin:

So as you see, it’s not just soft skills. Video assessment helps students develop technical psychomotor skills as well. There are two things I want to draw attention to that Dara mentions here. The first is that video assessment can encourage students to practice. As she mentioned, they set up the assignment so that their nursing students could practice as much as they want, record themselves as many times as they wanted. And then they chose what video they submitted to be graded. Setting up your assignment like that, encourages students to review their work, reflect, and practice the skills until they can get it right.

Hillary Gamblin:

There’s this added encouragement. When you see yourself doing something wrong, you see it, you want to fix it. And so your students are going to practice more than you’ve probably seen them practice before. And then the second thing that Dara mentions that’s really important is that whether it’s for communication skills and business majors as Dot was talking about, translation skills as it was at University of Vienna, or here in Alabama, the nursing psychomotor skills, all of these instructors have hit on an important theme, timestamped feedback. No matter the discipline, country, language, timestamped feedback is crucial for providing, engaging and specific feedback for students.

Hillary Gamblin:

They say the best feedback is specific feedback. What is more specific than saying, “Here, watch this 10 second clip. This is where you made the mistake, and this is how you can fix it.” It’s personal and it’s specific. Of course, there are other feedback features that video assessment software can offer. About six months ago, I interviewed Dr. Marti Elford. Marty is in a teacher preparation program in the United States, and she recently co-authored a book about feedback. As someone has devoted a lot of time and research to the art of feedback, I asked her why she picked GoReact to be their video assessment software. Her response highlights some video assessment features that can enhance your feedback. Here’s what she said.

Dr. Marti Elford:

We started out with a different software platform and we’re happy with it for a period of time. And then I had a chance to go to Finland on a Fulbright. Part of my work over there was to work with teacher prep faculty to figure out how to do remote supervision. And so I had time to investigate a variety of video software for teacher preparation. When I put them all to the test, GoReact exceeded my expectations. One of the things that I like the most about GoReact is, I can have a conversation with the student. The student can make a comment and then I can piggyback or make a comment based on that comment. And so it’s little like a chat’s read. So that’s one of the things I really like. The markers, the tags are brilliant because we as teacher prep, faculty can set up what it is we want the student to look for.

Dr. Marti Elford:

Based on their lesson plan, we’re really heavy to explicit instruction right now at SIUE. And so most of our marker as are related to the things we expect to see in explicit teaching. And so the students can watch their video and go, “Oh yeah, that’s where I explained it explicitly. That’s where I gave my advance organizer.” And then they can comment about that, or they can say, “Oops, I missed that.” And then we have a chance to make our own comments about what we see, and we can also respond to their comments. It’s affordable. It-

Hillary Gamblin:

So as you were seeing, with the right video assessment software, you can respond with time-coded feedback, you can use markers. And then another thing that wasn’t even mentioned by Marti is multimodal feedback. What I mean by multimodal feedback is that with the software, like GoReact, you can give feedback by writing it, using a voice recording or recording a video. So if you’re still is pronouncing a word wrong in French, instead of writing that down, record yourself saying the correct pronunciation. If a student’s fingers aren’t aligned right for a sign in American Sign Language, record a video instead of writing it, demonstrating what that sign looks like or should look like.

Hillary Gamblin:

So, along with improving feedback, video assessment software can also help students grow as reflective practitioners. Feedback and reflection, those are the two core pieces of video assessment software. In order for students to go out into the world and continue to adapt and grow after they matriculate, they need to be strong, reflective practitioners. As research shows, video inherently encourages self-reflection, especially paired with the right tools and techniques. Dr. Deborah Lively, I got to interview her a little while ago. She has been a pioneer in using video to promote self-reflection. She started using those bulky cam porters decades ago with her teacher candidates. When I asked her to explain the relationship between video and self-reflection, she told this following story.

Dr. Deborah Lively:

Before I actually share the story though, I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page that reflection is like systematic and intentional process that allows the pre-service teachers an opportunity to really consciously review their teaching. And I think go react allows that for the on action that they have an opportunity to really see themselves visually after. I had this student, one of the best students that I’ve ever had as far as in the academic and methods courses and stuff like that, just a wonderful student. Just knew her content, always got assignments in on time. Everything was wonderful and perfect. Now she got to student teaching and I was her supervisor. And as she was in an early childhood special education classroom, so I’m there observing her and I’ve got my camera and I’ve got taking my notes. I’m watching her and she’s reading a story, a read aloud to these little kids.

Dr. Deborah Lively:

It was horrible. I mean, she was reading just like this, and really didn’t have inflection, didn’t really have good rhythm. It was horrible. These little kids weren’t really pain tension, and it was just a struggle. And I’m thinking, “Oh my gosh, how am I going to tell this person how horrible they are?” Because she’s a great student, I didn’t want to tell her that I felt bad about that. Plus I wouldn’t really tell her that because the way I encourage reflection is not by telling them anyway. But in my mind, I’m just like, “Ugh,” stressing out. Well, so she was done. And then we went out in a little area where we could look at the video and I put the video and I said to her, I said, “Okay, as you look at your video, just tell me what you see. Tell me some of the things that you see.”

Dr. Deborah Lively:

It wasn’t even 10 seconds, 15 seconds into the video, and she’s like, “Is that me? Is that how I look?” Now, typically students, when they first look at video, they think, “Oh, my hair looks crappy,” or, “I look too fat,” or something like that. But she was talking about her expression. She said, “Debbie,” she said, “I have no expression.” She said, “No wonder the kids, their attention is so poor.” She made that discovery on her own. And then I said to her, instead of saying, “Well, yeah, you’re right,” I just said, “Okay, well tell me more. Tell me more, exactly what you’re saying. Let’s really think about this.” As she progressed, she started talking about, “Well, my inflection doesn’t really vary well. My facial expression doesn’t really support what’s in the story.” She said, “I’m not really pausing. I need to pause.”

Dr. Deborah Lively:

All these are so important to communication, especially with young children with special needs. She took that upon herself. She went home, she told her mother, she said, “Oh, I was really… Did poorly on this, blah, blah, blah.” And I said to her, “Don’t think about how you did. Let’s think about where you can go and what you can do to improve your own practice. This is about you taking ownership and making those changes.” And so she told her mom and her mom said to her, “Well, I’m so glad somebody told you.” And I’m thinking, wow, she must have all along not been a reader that used a lot of expression.

Dr. Deborah Lively:

So, she video recorded herself. She stood in the mirror and she practiced before she did lessons. She texted me and emailed me and said, “Okay, are you coming on such and such a day? I can’t wait for you to see what I’m doing.” Now, did she go from here to way over there? No. But did she make some progress? Absolutely. And she made the progress based on her own thinking, not because I told her something. So, I guess that’s an example of how using video and reflect active practice and being independent and thinking on your own feet about how you might improve, is really critical. By the way, she got hired and she’s a wonderful teacher out there doing some great things with young children.

Hillary Gamblin:

I had to leave that last par. In, I love Deb. It’s not just teacher trading programs in the United States that are using the power for video assessment to enhance reflective practice here’s Jonty Leese on the other side of the pond at the University of Warwick sharing the same sentiment.

Jonty Leese:

I think one of the interesting things that we’ve adapted this year is we’ve gone very heavily down the instructional coaching model, where instructional coaching, one of the key principles is the idea of actually videoing is one of the most powerful ways of self-reflecting. I was privileged enough to attend a seminar by Jim Knight who’s one of the gurus of instructional coaching. He emphasized that point. And that really struck a chord with us when we spoke about it in our department. And so a lot of our paperwork is around instructional coaching model, which gets students to self-reflect, gets them to get evidence of what they’re doing. I think that’s where video by three nature is incredibly powerful. So, our model is there’s a weekly coaching meeting using the instructional coaching paperwork and that’s driven by the students. But if you can then build in that loop, that regular weekly loop of where you’re getting evidence, demonstrating where the problem with your questions are.

Jonty Leese:

And as Karen said, you can times stamp, you can review synchronously, erase synchronously. If you’re the teacher, you can then get other people to drop in. Then you’ve got very powerful evidence to show where a student is and ultimately very, very easily, you can record them again every several weeks. And they can then actually self-reflect and say, “Actually, you’re right. I wasn’t very good at asking questions,” or “I actually didn’t use the room very well. Here’s the evidence, and here’s the evidence now of how I’ve progressed and how I’ve moved it forward and actually turned that into a strength.” So I think it’s all about tangible evidence that can impact and actually help students move forward and develop.

Hillary Gamblin:

Well, the two examples that I’ve given you are specific to teacher education. Self-reflection is applicable to all disciplines. Building off self-reflection, video assessment also enhances metacognition and critical thinking. One of my favorite examples of this is Patrick Luna at the University of Colorado College of Nursing. He truly is ingenious in the way that he uses video assessment to be a collaborative and engaging experience that enhances soft skills and critical thinking. Now on the clip that we’re going to show you, he’s going to use some nursing terms. And if you’re a nurse, you’re going to understand. If you’re not, then you may not. But despite whether you’re a nurse or not, I think you can pull through at the main idea here that you can use GoReact for simulated scenarios and group assignments. And that works in any discipline. So here’s Patrick. Can you share how you’ve been using GoReact to improve students clinical judgment?

Patrick Luna:

So, this is where I think a tool like GoReact is really beneficial. So due to that unique feedback mechanism that y’all just saw, I can have students interact with media in a very meaningful way. So that feedback mechanism is not just for faculty. I can have students interact with each other. I can have them specifically interact with the video. So, I recorded three students engaging in simulated scenarios in our sim lab, and I uploaded the video to GoReact. I pre-briefed before the scenario. I set up the scenarios with the entire class as if we were all about to engage in the scenario.

Patrick Luna:

So the students watched the simulation and were able to provide specific big responses to moments in the simulation. They recognized when a client was possibly confused based on an orientation assessment, and then we could discuss and debriefing what possible actions would be. So I was able to engage in a simulation in an online setting using real time feedback as if we were all in the same room together. This was not a written scenario. It wasn’t a, formulate a case study. This was a simulation of an actual patient encounter that the students engaged with. So, the possibilities with a learning tool like this are endless and I’m already brainstorming of other ways to use this tool to make even more realistic encounters. So I’ll let you guys take a look at the sim scenarios.

Alex:

Hi, my name’s Alex. This is Jessica. We’re going to be your nurses for the day.

Jessica:

How are you doing today, Mr. Russo?

Salvatore Russo:

I’m here. I’m here with you guys.

Jessica:

All right. Can you tell me your name and your date of birth?

Salvatore Russo:

My name is Salvatore Russo.

Jessica:

All right.

Salvatore Russo:

My date of birth, let me get that, January 11th.

Jessica:

All right.

Salvatore Russo:

And I need to check the date sometimes. Yeah.

Jessica:

All right. Looks like it matches. Are you comfortable? I know you’re here with some issues, but [crosstalk 00:30:06] pretty comfortable right now?

Salvatore Russo:

Yeah, I guess I’m fine right now.

Jessica:

Okay, perfect. Well, before we begin, we’re going to run through some universal competencies. Make sure we have everything we need and that your room is pretty much clear. Okay?

Salvatore Russo:

Oh, okay, okay. Y’all go ahead. Do what you got to do.

Alex:

All right. So I’m looking around the room. I see we have oxygen with-

Hillary Gamblin:

Fantastic. I’m curious because it sounds like you’re really taking advantage of GoReact. So are there any other interesting ways you’ve been using this software to better prepare your students for the workforce? I’m curious.

Patrick Luna:

Oh yes, definitely. So, the multi-camera setting, that’s my favorite featuring in GoReact. With that enabled, I can create an interactive environment for students to discuss and record an assignment. So, it’s a meeting room as well as a medium for them to complete an assignment. For example, I have my didactic students record an SBAR in groups of five or six. They discuss a case scenario, collaborate on an SBAR and then record it. And they do that all within GoReact. This is so much more meaningful than writing in a discussion post. I also can record video feedback directly into the assignment. So they get to see me too.

Hillary Gamblin:

Now, we’ve discussed a plethora future skills and use cases. So, as we are starting to wrap up, I wanted to review those. So there are two slides and I want to review some of those points on there. The first slide has different use cases I believe, and that is reminder. Video assessment can be used for soft skills, psychomotor skills, reflective practice, critical thinking, field work observation, and there are so many others that we didn’t even get to, but those are the ones that we discussed today. And then the other is features. There are some features that if you are already a current user, that you can be inspired to use. We had timestamped feedback, live review, markers, multimodal feedback, and multiple cameras.

Hillary Gamblin:

So, those are just some of the use cases, some of the features and some of assignments that educators use video assessment software to help their students develop skills. And for this reason, it’s becoming more and more common that the word of video assessment is spreading across departments. And in fact, we’re actually seeing a trend of sitewide licenses for video assessment, because frankly, as you’re witnessing through all these videos, video assessment is a universal tool in higher education. Here’s an example of an instructional designer at one of these universities where GoReact is spreading. No matter the discipline or learning objectives, it helps their students.

Dr. Mauricio Cadavid:

Hello, everyone. I’m Dr. Mauricio Cadavid, senior instructional designer at California State University, San Bernardino. Here at CSUSB, we have been using GoReact since late 2017, early 2018, in a gamut of courses ranging from communication to public administration, business, instructional technology, information decision sciences, and more recently teacher education. Courses in these departments range from undergraduate to graduate level, and therefore students learning objective is very drastically among them. As an instructional designer, it’s crucial for me to work with faculty in making sure that any tool used for instruction or learning purposes meets the student learning objectives. Here’s where GoReact has made a difference. Thanks to GoReact, ease of use platform and the robust options for providing feedback, my faculty have been able to help students learn to communicate more effectively, learn to provide effective feedback, lower their presentation anxiety levels, increase their public speakings effectiveness and develop a deeper sense of self-reflection.

Hillary Gamblin:

I think that’s a great example, is showing how universal video assessment really is. And so before we end, I actually like to share two takeaways. There’s a slide here for this. The first is, share a video assessment. As you’re watching this, you’re probably realizing there are colleagues or maybe people that are even on the same campus department that could use GoReact, a video assessment, that is. And if that’s the case, please do share it because it really is helpful for everybody. And then the second thing that we want you to take away is if you are a current user, we are hoping that these different use cases, assignments and features, you can see those and be inspired by those and by your colleagues all over the world and start to implement those into your own courses, programs and campuses. So, we’re hoping that is what you took away from today.

Hillary Gamblin:

I’d like to thank all the incredible individuals that I’ve had the opportunity to interview over the past two years and their expertise. They all did these workshops voluntarily, and we appreciate them taking the time out of their busy schedules to share with us. And I’d like to thank everyone who’s joined us live. We know that these workshops will be particularly valuable for everybody that signed up. So we are going to send an email with a link to today’s recording. So you have that. So watch for that in your inbox. We are going to continue doing these. Every month, we like to speak to people from all different disciplines, not just about GoReact, but about the issues that are going on in their disciplines and how they’re handling that. We’re trying to build a community where we can share ideas and help in higher education. So, thank you for those that participated live today, those working behind the scenes, and of course, all of our guests these past two years and in the future to come. We will see you next time.