Higher Education
How do you improve the student experience for students who learn through experience? That might sound like a tongue-twister from a Dr. Seuss book for deans, but it’s a constant question on the minds of everyone here at GoReact.
To consider that question through a different lens, we recently surveyed postsecondary students about their favorite GoReact features. We learned that students in skills-based courses prefer learning tools that increase opportunities for feedback and self-reflection, that are easy to use, and that make feedback more contextual.
Without further ado (or hearing from any instructional whos), here are the top three GoReact features chosen by and for students to improve the student experience in skills-based courses.
If you think students don’t want to be critiqued by their peers, think again. Students in our survey ranked Peer Review above all other GoReact features.
How Peer Review Works: When instructors create assignments in GoReact, they have the option to enable two types of peer review: Closed Peer Review or Open Peer Review.
Closed Peer Review allows students to see and critique videos submitted by other students in the course, but their feedback is only visible to course instructors/reviewers and to the presenter being critiqued. Open Peer Review allows anyone in the course to see feedback given to or received by any of their peers.
When students critique their peers’ video assignments, they have access to the same GoReact feedback tools used by their instructor:
How Peer Review Improves the Student Experience: For students being critiqued, peer review humanizes skill development by increasing both the quantity and diversity of feedback they receive on their performance. For students giving critiques, peer review allows them to reflect on their own skills as they evaluate the skills of others. It also improves their ability to give feedback, which makes them more open to receiving it.
Among students who responded to our survey, 85% said GoReact is easy to use. The feature they appreciate most for its simplicity: Video Upload.
How Video Upload Works: Students can use the Recorder feature in GoReact to capture a new video, or to upload an existing video saved as one of numerous supported file formats. From the GoReact desktop or mobile app, students simply:
How Video Upload Improves the Student Experience: Complicated technology of any kind creates a less-than-stellar student experience. Making it easy for students to capture and upload videos keeps the focus on learning (not on learning technology), and makes students more engaged in recording themselves on video as they practice new skills.
While time-coded feedback sounds like an online-only feature, it has surprising uses and benefits for evaluation of live student presentations.
How Time-Coded Feedback Works: When instructors or peer reviewers use GoReact to evaluate student presentations, their feedback is automatically time-coded to precise moments in student videos.
In-class presentations can be recorded and evaluated in real time, with live feedback synced to videos as they’re recorded. Feedback on pre-recorded videos works the same way, only it’s given asynchronously, and videos are paused automatically when reviewers start giving feedback.
How Time-Coded Feedback Improves the Student Experience: In-the-moment feedback is invaluable for helping students see exactly where they need improvement, but being interrupted during live presentations can be jarring.
By synching comments to precise moments in student videos with timestamps, GoReact makes in-the-moment feedback possible without interruptions. It also saves time for instructors, increases objectivity and consistency in grading, and makes it easy for students to go straight to any spot in a video that’s been flagged with a comment.
If you’re ready to see Peer Review, Easy Video Upload, and Time-Coded Feedback in action, watch an on-demand demo now.
We’ll show you how Thing 1, Thing 2, (Thing 3), and all other innovative things in GoReact work together to improve the student experience for students who learn through experience.
