New Technologies and Changing Pedagogy: Incorporating GoReact to Improve Student Oral Presentations

As an instructor of an undergraduate course in technical communication, I regularly change the technology and pedagogy I use to help prepare students and to help them gain a deeper understanding of technical communication. In past semesters, I have had students do one oral presentation, and they receive feedback from their peers and from me. But students did not have the opportunity to use the feedback they received since that was the end of the oral presentation unit. Ultimately, a lack of a chance for revision and growth made the process of giving feedback feel like “busy work” since none of the students had a chance in class to implement it. The obvious solution is to provide a second oral presentation. One constraint I faced with adding a second oral presentation is timing. To overcome this challenge, I decided to implement a new change to my classroom and incorporate new technology to improve student learning. This semester I implemented GoReact, a recording technology supported by my university’s grading platform. GoReact allows students to record themselves presenting, allows their peers to leave time stamped feedback on their presentations, and allows me to incorporate additional oral presentations to help students improve and grow as communicators.