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If you’re a regular reader of Extemp Central, chances are you’re familiar with Prepd (pronounced “prepped”). The startup that has built popular apps for Extemp and Congress recently launched Generation 3, a brand new version of its debate technology. I caught up with Ian Panchevre, the founder of Prepd. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Logan Scisco: I remember seeing Prepd three years ago, when Prepd first launched. It looks like a lot has changed since then. What’s Generation 3?
Ian Panchevre: Yeah, it’s crazy to think how much Prepd has grown. I think back on Generation 1, the first version of Prepd, which was strictly an app for Extemp, and nothing like what we have now.
We’ve spent a lot of time listening to students and coaches about what they need from their debate technology. We took all that feedback and spent the last year rebuilding Prepd accordingly.
In early August, we launched the new version. It’s called Generation 3 because this is the third time we’ve rebuilt Prepd from scratch. Generation 3 is an ambitious reimagination of what debate technology should be. Prepd is more beautiful, powerful, and reliable now, than ever before.
Logan: So, specifically, what are some of the new things that Generation 3 offers?
Ian: We’re expanding our mission beyond Extemp and Congress. Prepd now targets three core use cases.
The first use case is evidence management. Generation 3 is a file sharing platform. We’ve introduced a new application, the Library, which the base of Prepd’s platform. The Library is a hub that stores all of a debate team’s research for any debate event. In turn, Prepd’s debate apps are now applications that “run on top of” the Library. Extemp and Congress pull research files from the Library and reorganize the files for their specific event.
Second, Prepd is becoming an education technology. We will introduce a range of tools that help students learn more while they read and empower educators to teach. To that end, we’re working on two new features – the Memory Bank and the Vocabulary List – that will help students learn and will give their coaches really amazing insight into their students’ reading and thinking.
Third, Prepd is still all about debate productivity. We want to give Prepd debaters a strong competitive advantage by making them more productive in a round. Accordingly, Generation 3 addresses the most common customer requests. Saving web articles is faster. Prepd saves full PDF files. There are more search and filter tools. It’s easier to manage folders in Extemp. You can access evidence in Congress. The Article View and article reading experiences are totally different… I could go on.
Logan: Yes, that’s a lot. I do have to ask, though: Why did you feel compelled to rebuild Prepd?
Ian: Generation 3 is a huge step forward not only in terms of the overall product experience, but also in terms of future innovations we are now in a position to build.
We’ve learned so much from the community about its needs, and we started developing an ambitious vision for debate technology. The problem was that the previous version of Prepd couldn’t, structurally, enable that vision. Our options were to fight the technology and add marginal improvements over an extended period of time, or jump to the future with something bold and powerful. We opted for the latter.
Logan: Okay, so on that point, what’s next for Prepd? Where do you go from here?
Ian: Right now, we’re focused on polishing the existing product set. Namely, fixing bugs and improving usability. That’s been our focus since we released Generation 3 and will continue to occupy us for the near future.
That said, there are a lot of new features that are in the pipeline, and will be rolled out incrementally.
With Extemp, we plan to offer practice questions through the app. We want students to write and submit their own questions, and then allow the quality questions to appear whenever someone wants to simulate a round.
With Congress, we just released the Precedence Tracker, so students can now track precedence and recency in Congress. Moving forward, we will add an “Arguments” feature that allows students to create arguments or evidence tags directly from their reading. We also want to enable collaborative speech writing for teams.
With the Library, the Memory Bank and the Vocabulary List will be huge. These features will allow students to source content from their reading and either save flashcards to their Memory Bank, or save new words to their Vocabulary List.
With the Dashboard, we’re going to make it possible for coaches to see which topic questions and articles students had in each Extemp round, both online and offline. I think that will be cool. Also, we have a new feature that allows students to “mark” articles as read. We want to visualize reading activity in the Dashboard as well.
Beyond that, well, there’s a lot more we want to do… But we’re taking it one step at a time.
Logan: Showing the questions and articles that students had in rounds sounds great, which reminds me of something. Some leagues or districts are considering allowing wifi access in Extemp draw. What do you think about that?
Ian: I have mixed feelings about bringing the internet into a competitive round. There’s definitely a lot of cool things we can build if debaters are online while they compete. At the same time, I have concerns about how it affects the integrity of the activity. In Exemp, you have thirty minutes to prepare a speech. I worry that the internet will make it too easy for students to communicate with one another when they should be independently preparing.
Moreover, one of the educational virtues of Extemp is that students develop reading habits and they spend time studying current events before they compete. I don’t believe debate technology should undermine the educational aspect. Certainly, with Prepd, our goal is to enhance the educational experience of speech and debate.