VEXT: An application for idea generation and academic integrity
VEXT is an application designed for use by administrators, teachers, and students (and others) to change approaches to academic integrity as well as to help see source and idea relationships in documents. According to its website, "VEXT offers an ethical approach to idea generation, data visualization, and plagiarism checking."
On the student side, VEXT provides a visually attractive way of approaching source usage and idea relationships. From the faculty/admin site, it offers ways to manage information from a cohort and deal with academic integrity.
At its "heart" is what VEXT calls a "paper fingerprint" (see the site), a rectangular, strip-like image consisting of thin, vertical bars that helps students visualize data so they can recognize "themes, patterns, and sentiment" in their writing: This "code bar" provides, essentially, a map of their ideas and how they are using sources in their writing.
VEXT, in some ways, was born of frustration with contemporary plagiarism software paradigms, which can place faculty and students in adversarial roles. VEXT's site urges users to "Evolve from Plagiarism Detection to Data Driven Insights," and one of the blog posts on the VEXT site declares that "The old paradigm of plagiarism detection is dead."
The app promises to offer a different approach. Using machine learning algorithms, it instead helps users visualize "the DNA' of your papers and pedagogy."
For faculty, the app has a dashboard (1) to help spot data trends in assignments while also allowing for "crowdsourced plagiarism detection"--seeing those trends in certain contexts. For administration, there is a broader dashboard that helps administrators make decisions and see analytics to determine the effectiveness of curriculum across a swath of instructors; this includes an open, searchable database so administrators can access knowledge being created across an institution.
Note:
1) I have been interacting with the company since the summer, and they are fast at work improving the back-end dashboard tools.
On the student side, VEXT provides a visually attractive way of approaching source usage and idea relationships. From the faculty/admin site, it offers ways to manage information from a cohort and deal with academic integrity.
At its "heart" is what VEXT calls a "paper fingerprint" (see the site), a rectangular, strip-like image consisting of thin, vertical bars that helps students visualize data so they can recognize "themes, patterns, and sentiment" in their writing: This "code bar" provides, essentially, a map of their ideas and how they are using sources in their writing.
VEXT, in some ways, was born of frustration with contemporary plagiarism software paradigms, which can place faculty and students in adversarial roles. VEXT's site urges users to "Evolve from Plagiarism Detection to Data Driven Insights," and one of the blog posts on the VEXT site declares that "The old paradigm of plagiarism detection is dead."
The app promises to offer a different approach. Using machine learning algorithms, it instead helps users visualize "the DNA' of your papers and pedagogy."
For faculty, the app has a dashboard (1) to help spot data trends in assignments while also allowing for "crowdsourced plagiarism detection"--seeing those trends in certain contexts. For administration, there is a broader dashboard that helps administrators make decisions and see analytics to determine the effectiveness of curriculum across a swath of instructors; this includes an open, searchable database so administrators can access knowledge being created across an institution.
Note:
1) I have been interacting with the company since the summer, and they are fast at work improving the back-end dashboard tools.
Labels: educational technology, idea generation, plagiarism, VEXT
posted by Scott Warnock at 7:32 AM
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