Monitoring student progress through their written "point of originality"

Abstract

This paper describes a new method for the objective evaluation of student work through the identification of original content in writing assignments. Using WordNet as a lexical reference, this process allows instructors to track how key phrases are employed and evolve over the course of a student's writing, and to automatically visualize the point at which the student's language first demonstrates original thought, phrased in their own, original words. The paper presents a case study where the analysis method was evaluated by analyzing co-blogging data from a reading and writing intensive undergraduate course. The evidence shows that the tool can be predictive of students' writing in a manner that correlates with their progress in the course and engagement in the technology-mediated activity. By visualizing otherwise subjective information in a way that is objectively intelligible, the goal is to provide educators with the ability to monitor student investment in concepts from the course syllabus, and to extend or modify the boundaries of the syllabus in anticipation of pre-existing knowledge or trends in interest. A tool of this sort can be of value particularly in larger gateway courses, where the sheer size of the class makes the ongoing evaluation of student progress a daunting if not otherwise impossible task.