leaving a partner waiting
When a student stops replying to their partner, Sway warns them six hours before your completion deadline, and three hours before it offers the student left waiting a guide to finish with instead. If that offer is taken, the quiet student's assignment is over and their account is suspended in your class until you put them back. None of it needs you to act. Use space bar to move to the next page.
The other side of this story is rescuing a stalled chat, where the student left waiting writes to you and you step in before any of this happens.
A drawing of the Sway student interface, shown one screen at a time as you scroll. It illustrates the steps described below; nothing in it acts on the real product, and no real student's data appears in it.
due
Thu Sep 17, 11:59pm
ActiveDeadline: Thu Sep 17, 11:59 PM
Progress40%
Tue
👋 Welcome, everyone!
Our topic is medical paternalism. We'll be discussing this statement:
Medical paternalism can be justified if the expected gain to patient welfare is sufficiently high.
- Tess agrees with the statement.
- Riley disagrees with the statement.
My name is Guide, and I'm here to support your discussion. If you need anything, start your message with “Hey Guide” 🤓
Sun
Mon
Tue
Enter a message
FromSway <no-reply@swaybeta.ai>
Totfarrow@swayu.edu
SentThu Sep 17, 6:00 PM
SwayBeta | ACTION REQUIRED | Your assignment partner is waiting
Hey Tess!
The deadline for your Sway assignment in Week 4 discussion is approaching and Riley is waiting for your reply! If you don't reply promptly, they might complete the assignment without you.
If this happens, you will not be able to complete the assignment. Your account will be temporarily suspended for Week 4 discussion and you will need to contact your instructor to reactivate it.
Deadline: Thu Sep 17, 11:59 PM
Progress40%
Tue
Mon
Tue
Enter a message
Deadline: Thu Sep 17, 11:59 PM
Progress40%
Tue
Because you didn't respond in a timely manner, Riley has been matched with another partner. You cannot complete this assignment. Please contact your instructor for more information.
FromSway <no-reply@swaybeta.ai>
Totfarrow@swayu.edu
SentFri Sep 18, 12:05 AM
SwayBeta | Account suspended
Tess,
In your recent assignment for Week 4 discussion, you completed the opinion survey on Sat Sep 12 and were matched with Riley on Sun Sep 13. You did not respond to your partner in a timely manner, and as a result, they could not complete the assignment with a classmate.
Your account has been temporarily suspended in Week 4 discussion. To reactivate your account and participate in future assignments for this class, please contact your instructor.
won't be included in the next assignment
| Student | |
|---|---|
| Tess (tfarrow@swayu.edu) | Reactivate |
FromSway <no-reply@swaybeta.ai>
Totfarrow@swayu.edu
SentFri Sep 18, 9:20 AM
SwayBeta | Account reactivated
Tess,
Good news! Your Sway account has been reactivated in Week 4 discussion. You can now participate in assignments for this class again.
Please make sure to respond to your partner in a timely manner to avoid suspension in the future.
Scroll, or press space
You're about to walk through what happens when a student stops replying to their Sway partner, from that student's side.
Pressing the space bar goes to the next screen, or you can scroll.
01 The chat nobody is answering
Tess answered once on Sunday and has not been back. Riley has written twice since. The meter has been at 40% for three days, because it only moves when both students contribute.
Nothing here is hidden from Tess. The messages are in the app, and Sway has emailed her about each one.
why students go quiet
It is rarely refusal. More often it is a student who meant to reply on Monday and then had a bad week. Sway treats it that way too: several warnings rather than one cut-off, and the first of them simply says somebody is waiting.
02 Six hours to go
Six hours before your completion deadline, Sway writes to the student who hasn't replied. It names the partner and says what happens if they don't reply: no completion, and a suspension in this class.
It goes by email, and also as a text and a push notification to any student who has added them. This is one of the messages a student cannot mute.
03 Three hours to go
Three hours out, Sway acts for the student who did the work. Riley gets this banner over the chat, offering to finish the conversation with Guide.
Riley can ignore it and keep waiting, and some students do. Nothing happens to Tess until Riley presses YES.
if you got there first
This is the same offer you can make by hand at any point from the Students tab, which is its own walkthrough. Doing it yourself is better when a student has told you they can't take part: you don't have to wait for the deadline to get close.
04 The chat is over
Once Riley accepts, this is what Tess finds. The conversation is gone from the screen, the message box is gone with it, and the thread in the sidebar is greyed out and cannot be opened.
The wording says Riley “has been matched with another partner”. What actually happened is that Riley is now chatting with Guide.
what a student asks you at this point
Whether they can still do it. They can't do this assignment, and finding Riley in class will not help. There is no way back into a chat that has been closed, for you or for Sway's support team.
05 Suspended
After the assignment closes, one more email. The suspension is for your class only and does nothing to the student's account anywhere else in Sway.
The suspension is automatic, so a student who tells you they've been suspended hasn't necessarily been suspended by you.
when it lifts by itself
A first automatic suspension lifts on its own once one assignment has gone by. A later one only lifts after three completed assignments in a row with nothing else going wrong, so a repeat ghoster stays suspended until you put them back. A suspension you impose by hand never lifts on its own.
06 Putting them back
Your Suspended accounts tab, with Reactivate on the row. That's all you have to do.
It has to happen before the opinion deadline of the assignment currently running, or it won't take effect for that one: matching has already run, and a late reactivation cannot be fitted into pairs that exist.
Back in
Tess is told, and can take the next assignment. The email ends by asking her to respond to her partner in a timely manner in future.
If you would rather none of this happened, your assignment text is where to prevent it. A line saying the deadline is hard and that a partner is relying on them does more than anything Sway sends afterwards.
what happens next
Sway warns the student, offers the one left waiting a guide, closes the chat and suspends the account. The only step that is yours is the last one. What you get is a row in the results spreadsheet: Tess reads as Completed FALSE with her progress frozen where it stopped, and Riley as Completed TRUE with “continued with Guide” beside their name.
If a student writes to you before any of this, you can act sooner and get a better outcome than the automatic path does — rescuing a stalled chat is that story. If you want to see what a chat looks like when both students turn up, that is doing an assignment.
Up next
The same story from the other side, and the assignment when it goes to plan.
Rescuing a stalled chat
The student left waiting writes to you, and you step in before the deadline does it for you.
Read it →Doing an assignment
The whole student arc when it goes to plan: registration, consent, the opinion survey, the chat, the quiz.
Read it →Managing an assignment
Your side: the roster, Chat with Guide, suspending an account, and the results spreadsheet.
Read it →