Higher Education
GoReact has always been focused on empowering confident skills, and students can tell.
In a recent interview, three students from the Master of Arts in Teaching Program at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville talked with us about the benefits of receiving feedback through GoReact.
See what they had to say about how video + feedback improved their teaching skills and helped prepare them to become professional educators.
Jane: “Feedback is very important. You have to think on your feet a lot when you’re a teacher, so it’s great to have your professors observe you, see how you’re working, what you’re saying to the students, and teach you how to approach things in a different way, or how to say things differently.
What a professor can say when they’re observing me is ‘OK, this is what you’re not seeing in that minute’ and that’s very helpful. The feedback gives you a different picture than what you thought you saw in the first place.
Feedback is very important to me—so much that I would print out and save instructors’ comments from GoReact because they were asking questions that I didn’t think of. Words have so much power. It’s important to take them to heart and hear the real meaning behind them.”
Sherrie: “It’s very important. On a scale of 1–10, with 10 being the highest score, feedback is a 10. It’s the best.
This is the first platform that I had ever used to record myself teaching just to watch myself again. Because of GoReact, I had to reflect and tag moments where I needed to improve. We would get feedback from teachers and peers, and it was very helpful because you could see where their feedback was, find it on the video, replay it, and really learn from it. It was really perfect in that regard.
It was also really good to watch your fellow colleagues and see something they did that you really learned from. You think, ‘Wow, that’s a great idea, I’m going to incorporate that into my teaching.’ So I really liked it in that regard too. You see different techniques and approaches and that was really cool.”
Eunece: “It’s completely necessary. Feedback is the only way you grow and learn, you know, constantly getting constructive, timely, and detailed feedback is extremely important. GoReact was a way for me to give myself feedback by watching myself, and then my professor and cohort could watch me and give good feedback as well.”
Jane: “Absolutely. There’s no way to escape truth when you can see it right in front of you. Professors can say, ‘This is what you did, and this is how you can add to it to make it better.’
GoReact is a reality check and you see what you really look like—you see your body language, what your face is doing and it’s good to see what’s real versus what you think is happening in your head.”
Sherrie: “I think so because it gave me feedback from a different perspective. It helps because in other assignments, you would maybe get a grade and nothing else and you felt like it wasn’t enough, but I actually got feedback through GoReact that was helpful.”
Eunece: “Yes, because a lot of times you think you’re doing one thing, but when you look back, you’re able to say, ‘OK, I see what you’re seeing’, versus in a classroom setting where I’m standing in front of my professor live with them writing out their feedback it may be more challenging understanding what they saw because I can’t see myself in real time. Whereas with GoReact and the uploaded videos, it made it easier for me to examine myself and see what I did well and not so well.”
Jane: “I think more than anything, what I learned was affirming. I hadn’t been teaching for a number of years, and after a move, I needed to get a new license, so that’s the reason I went into the program. It was affirming to see that I could do what I needed to do for my job and I had the abilities, but it also helped me get my confidence back. I think that the feedback I got was very valuable, very helpful, and very well thought out, and it’s something that I will carry with me forward.”
Sherrie: “Yes because the feedback I got was very helpful and was available on demand even though my trainers couldn’t be there live to watch me.”
Eunece: “Yes because feedback on GoReact was more detailed and had more insight. It wasn’t one overall ‘good job’, it would help us pinpoint moments to improve. It’s frustrating to get a general response on something you worked so hard on because you want to know what was good or bad about it, but with GoReact, you knew.”
Watch these short videos from Jane, Sherrie, and Eunece to see how GoReact has influenced them, and hear why they hope other instructors will use it in their programs.
Check out this blog post to learn more about the importance of feedback for students.
