Will Student Teachers Still Need Me?!

Dr. Thomas Fisher

AI Video Feedback for Teachers, Human-AI Partnerships, Reflection & Growth

Will Student Teachers still need me?!

This is the question I asked myself the first time I experienced the AI features in the video-capture program GoReact.  Before I can go on, you need context. Who am I, and what is GoReact?

The “who”, that is me, Dr. Tom Fisher, a 13-year veteran of the Cato College of Education specializing in Middle-Secondary Education and the supervision of Student Teachers every semester. The “what” is GoReact, a video-capture program widely used in our college and our specialty area nationally as a way to capture video evidence of student teachers’ pedagogy, especially Distance Education candidates (outside of the college’s 50-mile radius) and, most importantly, give them time-stamped feedback as seen below.

The image above displays GoReact’s capacity to allow users to comment with automatically time-stamped feedback, facilitating communication and reflection between the student teacher and the supervisor.  There are also color-coded “markers” an instructor can create and implement to focus the student teachers’ attention to high-leverage practices. GoReact’s facilitation of the online observation process is—to say the least—essential to my colleagues and I, as we are the “HI” or Human Intelligence in the observation process. 

However, as the point person in the Cato College of Education for GoReact, I was contacted by the developers about the inclusion of artificial intelligence into the program. Intrigued, I said, “YES, absolutely count me in”.  Below is that same student teacher, but now getting AI rather than human feedback.

I was amazed at how well the AI feedback was delivered and how accessible and easy it was to follow.  I was actually in full agreement with almost everything stated!  Then, my excitement turned to concern, and when discussing my initial thoughts with the development team, I simply said, “Could you wait to release this until I retire!?”.  

Luckily, I came to my senses, and upon deeper conversations and review of the video markers (those color-coded items seen in the photos), I reflected on the foundation of Human Intelligence (HI) necessary for AI-facilitated tools like GoReact to function. 

• HI is necessary to review the feedback marker choices.
• HI is necessary to review the validity and timing of the feedback. 
• HI is necessary to help student teachers integrate their feedback with fidelity, identifying the most impactful and purposeful next step for growth.

Student teachers sincerely value the timely feedback provided by GoReact AI, and are equally as impressed as I was with the breadth and specificity of the AI-generated feedback. In the words of one student, “Even though I may not do the exact suggestions it provided, the AI points certainly gave me some great ideas to use for the future, things I had never considered before. The fact that it gave me all these ideas instantly was super helpful.”

As I reflected on my initial dread over being replaced, I further reflected on the critical importance of human and emotional intelligence in making sense of an increasingly artificially intelligent world. GoReact AI provides a powerful new avenue for student teachers to navigate the challenges of the student teaching semester. Want to receive feedback on a lesson but don’t have time to wait for your supervisor to review it? Feel stuck in your teaching process but don’t want the “pressure” of a formal observation from another human? GoReact AI can help, and in turn, I can focus my support on helping my teachers navigate the more pressing, human-specific challenges that confront educators in the classroom daily.