the student app
Every screen a student can reach in Sway, drawn as a wireframe you can click around in — including the ones nobody wants: waiting for a partner who hasn't arrived, a partner who goes quiet, a suspended account. Nothing here touches the real product, no student's data appears in it, and the chat you can type into replies with the same few lines whatever you say.
Pick a situation below. Each one drops you into the story at the point where it stops being ordinary, and you can click on from there.
what's happening to you
- It's your first timesigning up, and consent
- A normal assignmentsurvey, chat, quiz, done
- Nobody disagrees yetwaiting to be matched
- Your partner goes quietthe Chat with Guide offer
- You're the one who went quietwarnings, then suspension
- A QuickMatchno deadlines at all
- You're in two classesswitching between them
- Your accountsettings, notifications, privacy
A drawing of the Sway student interface. Every screen it can show is listed under “every screen” below, and each one is described in the notes beside it. Nothing in it acts on the real product.
Welcome to Sway!
Your classmates are debating these topics right now:
- Medical paternalism can be justified if the expected gain to patient welfare is sufficiently high.
- We should legalize kidney markets.
- In most cases, abortion is morally permissible and should be legal.
Tell us where you stand, and we'll match you with another student who disagrees.
It's four quick steps from here and you're in — about 2 minutes.
This page contains important information about your use of SwayBeta (hereafter, “Sway”). Please read it closely.
Summary of key points
- This research aims to improve the quality of student discussions
- Your participation is voluntary, and you may discontinue at any time
- Your school email is used for verification and login purposes only
- Your chats are encrypted and private by default
- Your data is not used for training commercial artificial intelligence (AI) models
- Your anonymized message contents are only used for educational research if you opt in
- You control what information is shared with your instructor
- You can delete your account at any time
You should review this Consent Form
SELECT ALL THAT APPLY:
- I have read and understood the consent form
- I am at least 18 years old
- I allow my instructor to verify that I have completed Sway assignments
- I allow educational research use of my anonymized message contents
Your Name
This is what you'll be known by on the platform. It doesn't need to be your real name, but it should be a real name — not an internet handle.
Optionally, you may also provide preferred pronouns:
If you provide these, they will be used to refer to you appropriately across the platform. If you don't, we'll guess your pronouns based on the first name you provided.
Text message notifications
Sway can text you when your partner replies or a deadline is coming up. Email works too — this is optional.
Phone number
Next, we'll collect your opinions on potential chat topics set by your instructor. This will automatically match you with other students to begin chatting at the time set by your instructor.
When you chat with another student about a particular topic, they will see:
- your stance on the topic (agree or disagree)
- your preferred first name
- your profile picture (if you upload one)
They will not see any other information about you or your use of Sway.
Please indicate your level of agreement with the following statements. Based on your responses, we will match you with a classmate who disagrees with you to chat about one of these topics. Use the rightmost column to mark topics off-limits—we won't match you on any of these.
| Strongly disagree | Moderately disagree | Slightly disagree | No idea! | Slightly agree | Moderately agree | Strongly agree | Off-limits | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Medical paternalism can be justified if the expected gain to patient welfare is sufficiently high. | × | |||||||
| We should legalize kidney markets. | × | |||||||
| In most cases, abortion is morally permissible and should be legal. | × |
Ready to chat? You will be matched with a classmate to discuss one of the topics above.
Sway won't pick any topic that you marked “off-limits.”
Remember: Your classmate will be expecting to hear from you. Since partners cannot be reassigned, please only continue if you are genuinely up for it.
- I commit to responding in a timely manner.
Thanks for checking out Sway.
You can close this tab and return to your school website.
If you changed your mind and you do want to participate (woo hoo!), click here to return to the previous page.
Please wait while we prepare the understanding quiz. This usually takes under 20 seconds.
Writing questions to test how well you followed
Question 1 of 5
- That patients are usually wrong about what they want.
- That the harm of the knowledge can outweigh the value of having it.
- That doctors have better training than patients do.
- That families should be told before the patient is.
- That it would be too expensive to implement.
- That most patients would not understand the form.
- That it treats a one-off decision as if it settled every later one.
- That it is already the law in most countries.
Now you've had a chance to discuss the topic, rate your level of agreement with the original statement again.
Remember, all responses to Sway surveys are private and never shown to your instructor.
Medical paternalism can be justified if the expected gain to patient welfare is sufficiently high.
| Strongly disagree | Moderately disagree | Slightly disagree | No idea | Slightly agree | Moderately agree | Strongly agree |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strongly Disagree | Disagree | Neutral | Agree | Strongly Agree | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| My partner was respectful | |||||
| My partner had better reasons for their views than I expected | |||||
| It was valuable to chat with a student who did NOT share my perspective | |||||
| Guide's contributions improved the discussion | |||||
| This discussion led me to change my mind about something related to the topic | |||||
| The skills I practiced in this chat will be useful in my conversations outside of Sway |
What was the most interesting thing your partner said? Your feedback is extremely valuable to us!
How would you rate Sway? (Optional)
- Awesome
- Good
- Neutral
- Not a fan
- Hated it
We want to make Sway awesome, so we'll consider what you share with us here very carefully. Your feedback is not linked to your identity and is not shared with your instructor—it's reviewed only by the education researchers working on Sway
Would you like us to reply to your feedback?
- Yes
- No
Chat partner available. Start a new chat!
No chat partner available. Try another topic or check back later!
Deadline: 2026-09-17 23:59
Progress40%
17m
👋 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” 🤓
Tue
Wed
Good start. Before you go further — Riley, you said you disagree. What is it about a doctor deciding for a patient that troubles you most?
Deadline: 2026-09-17 23:59
Progress100%
17m
Deadline: 2026-09-17 23:59
Progress100%
17m
Deadline: 2026-09-17 23:59
Progress100%
17m
Chat partner available. Start a new chat!
No chat partner available. Try another topic or check back later!
You will be matched with a chat partner no later than 2026-09-14 23:59.
Chat partner available. Start a new chat!
No chat partner available. Try another topic or check back later!
Chat partner available. Start a new chat!
No chat partner available. Try another topic or check back later!
👋 Welcome, everyone! Our topic is medical paternalism.
Kai agrees with the statement. Riley disagrees with the statement.
Deadline: 2026-09-17 23:59
Progress40%
2d
Mon
Wed
Deadline: 2026-09-17 23:59
Progress40%
Just now
Wed
Deadline: 2026-09-17 23:59
Progress40%
Just now
👋 Hi there!
Your partner is no longer participating in this assignment. You can continue discussing the topic with me.
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.
I've reviewed your previous conversation, so feel free to pick up where you left off. My name is Guide — if you need anything, start your message with “Hey Guide” 🤓
Deadline: 2026-09-17 23:59
Progress40%
Deadline: 2026-09-17 23:59
Progress20%
3d
Deadline: 2026-09-17 23:59
Progress20%
4d
Because you didn't respond in a timely manner, Tess has been matched with another partner. You cannot complete this assignment. Please contact your instructor for more information.
No topics
The opinion deadline has passed. You cannot complete this assignment. If you have questions, please address them to your instructor.
Wait for instructor to assign topics.
Your next assignment is scheduled to begin at Fri Oct 2, 9:00 AM.
Class
Chat partner available. Start a new chat!
No chat partner available. Try another topic or check back later!
Class
Deadline: 2026-09-17 23:59
Progress100%
2d
Riley
rchen@swayu.edu
Student
Preferred first name
Pronouns (optional)
Phone number (optional)
Notifications
- Email me immediately if I receive a new message while offline
- Email me if I haven't responded to a new message within 2 hours
- Email me if I have an assignment deadline in the next 12 hours
- Enable SMS/text message notifications
- Enable push notifications to mobile devices
- Enable audio (chime) notifications
Permissions and sharing ▴
Reveal my email address to my instructor so I can receive credit for assignments ON
Turning this setting on allows your instructor to see when you have finished an assignment. This does not allow your instructor to read your chats. However, they will have access to your preferred first name, email address, quiz scores, and information on whether you and your assignment partners remained on topic. If this setting is turned off, your preferred first name and email address are not revealed to your instructor so they cannot give you credit for Sway assignments.
Use my de-identified message contents to help improve education research ON
When your message contents are de-identified, no information about you is stored with the message contents. Turning this setting on allows the education researchers developing Sway to use your de-identified message contents for research that aims to benefit all students. Message contents are not linked to your identity and are never used to train commercial AI models. You can always turn this setting off in the future.
Advanced settings ▴
a browser confirm, then it's done
Riley
rchen@swayu.edu
Participant
Permissions and sharing ▾
Sign in
You register once, with your school email, using a link your instructor gives you. After that this is the way in.
Only one session at a time: signing in somewhere else signs you out here.
Press Login.
Register
Your instructor gives you a link with your class code already in it, so the access-code field is filled in and hidden. Use your school email — some classes only accept one domain, and it's how your instructor knows the account is yours.
Sway asks for a first name only, and asks for a preferred one rather than a legal one. If you type two words it offers to keep just the first.
You'll get an activation email within a few minutes. If it doesn't arrive, check spam, then reset your password to get a fresh link.
Press Sign Up.
Welcome to Sway
The first thing a new student sees, and it opens with the actual statements their classmates are arguing about — not with a description of the software.
Four screens from here to the opinion survey.
Press Next.
Consent
Sway is a research project as well as a product, so students are told what is collected and asked what may be used. Only the first box is required — you can't use Sway without saying you've read the form. The second decides whether your messages could ever be used in research at all, since under-18s can't consent to that whatever they tick fourth. The third is what lets your instructor confirm you finished an assignment. The fourth is the research opt-in itself.
The third and fourth can be changed at any time in Settings.
Leaving the fourth unticked, as here, changes nothing about your experience. The full document is the privacy policy, which is what the Consent Form button opens.
Press Next.
Your name
What your partner will call you. It doesn't have to be your legal name, but it does have to be a name — the ask is explicit that an internet handle won't do, because the conversation goes better between two people than between two usernames.
Pronouns are optional, and used across the platform if you give them.
Open the pronouns list, or press Next.
Pronouns
Four options and a way to decline. If you skip it, Sway guesses from your first name — which is a good reason to set it if the guess would be wrong.
Pick any of them.
Notifications
A phone number is optional and only used for texts. Email covers everything on its own.
This matters more than it looks: most of what goes wrong in a Sway assignment is a student not knowing their partner has replied. All of it is adjustable later in Settings.
Press Yes or skip it.
What your partner sees
Set out before you rate anything, because it is the thing students most want to know: your side of the argument, your first name, and your picture if you added one. Nothing else.
Not your ratings of the other statements, not your email, not what you said to anyone else.
Press Next.
Opinion survey
The one thing every student must do, and the one deadline that cannot be extended by anybody. Rate each statement on the seven-point scale; Sway then pairs you with a classmate on the other side of one of them.
The last column marks a topic off-limits: it's a radio in the same group as the ratings, so choosing it clears your rating, and Sway will not match you on that topic at all. You can't mark them all.
did it go through?
Sway emails you a receipt within a few minutes. If the receipt hasn't arrived, your opinions were not registered — go back and submit again before the deadline. This is the single most common thing that goes wrong.
Press Yes, let's do this! or the other one.
No, I'd rather not
A dead end with one link out. Nothing is saved and nothing is recorded — opting out isn't remembered, so the next time you open Sway you'll be asked again.
Press click here to return.
Your topics
After the survey, this. One row per statement, and a dot saying whether anyone who disagrees with you about it is available right now.
A filled dot means go. A hollow one means Sway is still looking — and in an assignment that's fine, because the opinion deadline guarantees you a partner whether or not one has turned up by then.
Click the topic with the filled dot, or one without.
Chat
Guide opens by naming the topic, the statement, and which side each of you is on, then gets out of the way. It comes back when it can help — and you can call it any time by starting a message with Hey Guide.
The bar on the left is progress, and it is not a clock. It measures the conversation: how much each of you has said, in what pattern, and it moves at the pace of whoever has contributed least. You cannot get there by writing an essay at someone.
Type something and press enter. Your partner will reply and the bar will move. Try starting a message with “Hey Guide”. The replies are canned — nothing you type here goes anywhere.
100%
Progress hits 100 and this appears. The chat is done in the sense that counts for credit; you're free to keep talking, and plenty of pairs do.
Give me a moment is not a way out of the quiz — it swaps the modal for a banner with a countdown.
Press either button.
Chat complete
The banner version, with the countdown running. When it reaches zero you go to the quiz anyway.
The composer is disabled while this is up.
Press Proceed to Quiz.
Preparing your quiz
A real wait, usually under twenty seconds. The quiz is written for you, from your conversation, so it cannot exist until the conversation does.
The line under the spinner cycles: thinking about your partner's arguments, writing questions, creating and checking answer keys, making sure distractors are clearly wrong, double checking our work.
Press Next.
Understanding quiz
Five multiple-choice questions, four options each, all on one page. Every question is about your partner — what they think and why they think it. That is the whole design: the way to do well is to have listened.
It is written from your actual transcript, so no two students get the same quiz, and there is nothing to revise.
do I find out how I did?
No. There is no score, no pass mark and no right-answer reveal anywhere in the app. Your score goes to your instructor, in their spreadsheet. Not seeing one is not a sign that something failed.
Press Next.
Rate it again
The same statement you started from, now that you've argued about it. Comparing this to your first answer is how Sway measures whether a conversation moved anyone — which is the research the whole thing is built on.
Private. Your instructor never sees it, and neither does your partner.
Press Next.
How was your chat?
Five options. This is the number that ends up in the feedback page and in your instructor's report, in aggregate.
Press Next.
Rating the conversation
Six statements about your partner, about Guide, and about the experience. You get six of a bank of fourteen, chosen so that every statement gets rated by somebody across a class.
If your instructor wrote statements of their own, those appear here too.
who reads this
Your instructor sees aggregates for the class, never your individual answers and never anything attached to your name. Your partner sees none of it.
Press Next.
Anything else
Optional, free text, and the prompt above it changes. These answers are what the feedback page publishes, with permission and without names.
Press Submit.
Done
That's a complete Sway assignment: opinions in, chat to 100%, quiz answered, survey submitted.
You can carry on chatting if you want to, and plenty of pairs do.
Your instructor sees that you finished, your quiz score, and whether the conversation stayed on topic. They do not see the conversation.
Go back to the chat, or pick another situation above.
Waiting for a match
You've rated the statements and nobody who disagrees with you is free yet. Every dot is hollow, and there is one sentence in the middle of the screen.
The sentence is the point: in an assignment you are guaranteed a partner at the opinion deadline, whether or not anyone suitable has arrived by then. Nobody is left out for lack of a match.
what if literally nobody disagrees?
Then you're paired with someone who agrees, and one of you is asked to argue the other side. If the class has an odd number, three students share one chat. Guide is never used to make up the numbers.
Click a topic and see what it says.
Check back later
Clicking a topic that isn't ready gets you exactly this. It is the entire interface for “nobody disagrees with you about this one yet”.
There is nothing to do about it. You'll be emailed the moment you're matched.
Press Close.
Waiting in a QuickMatch
The same screen with the sentence removed — and that absence is the whole difference between the two modes.
A QuickMatch has no opinion deadline, so there is no moment at which you're guaranteed a partner. You wait until a classmate who disagrees with you turns up, and if none ever does, you wait. Your instructor can force the matching by hand.
Compare it with the assignment version.
QuickMatch
Same app, same survey, same chat. The only difference is that nothing has a deadline: you're matched when someone suitable is free, and you chat when you both are.
Instructors use these for in-class activities and one-off events rather than for graded homework.
Open the topic.
QuickMatch chat
Note the card on the left: a title, a progress bar, and no Deadline line, because there is no deadline to name.
Everything else — Guide, progress, the quiz at 100% — works exactly as it does in an assignment.
Try the assignment chat, which you can type into.
Your partner goes quiet
You've messaged, they haven't come back, and the deadline is close. Sway notices this on its own, in the last half-day before the deadline: it emails your partner a warning six hours out, and if they still haven't replied three hours out, it offers you this.
You do not have to take it. Ignoring the banner and carrying on waiting is a real choice, and partners often do come back.
what happens to them
They were emailed a warning before this appeared, and had hours to answer it. If you accept and they never returned, they can't complete the assignment and their account is suspended for the next one. If they come back after you accept, they're offered their own chat with Guide.
Press YES.
Accepted
A short confirmation, and then Guide picks the conversation up in the same thread.
Press Close.
Chatting with Guide
Guide has read everything you and your partner said, and opens by saying so. Progress carries on from where it was, and the quiz still comes at 100%.
This exists so a student who did the right thing isn't penalised for a partner who didn't. It is a fallback, not a feature — a conversation with a classmate who disagrees with you is the thing Sway is for, and this isn't that.
Type something. Guide answers here too.
Offered by your instructor
The same offer arriving the other way round: your instructor gave your partner a way out and chose Chat with Guide for you, so you get a fresh thread rather than a banner on the old one.
An email says the same thing. Your instructor could instead have chosen to end your participation or to suspend you — which is why this screen names what happened.
Press Open it.
Warning
Now you're the partner who went quiet. Before anything is decided, Sway writes to you — email, text and push, all with this wording — and says plainly what happens if you don't reply.
There is still time at this point. Replying now is the end of it.
Press Open Sway anyway to see what happens if you don't.
Too late
Your partner accepted the offer to finish with Guide, so the assignment is closed to you. The thread is greyed out and there is no composer.
This is not yet a suspension — that comes after the assignment ends. It is the assignment being over for you.
Press Close.
Suspended
After the assignment closes, an account that abandoned a partner is suspended. You land here instead of on your chats, with the class named in the banner.
Suspension is per class — if you're in two, the other one is unaffected. Your instructor lifts it. A first automatic suspension also lifts on its own after you complete an assignment; a second one has to be earned back.
why the one toggle is still here
Because an instructor cannot reactivate a student who hasn't shared their identity with them. If it's off, turning it on is the first thing to do.
Try your account above to compare with the normal settings page.
Missed the opinion deadline
The one deadline with no way round it. If you didn't submit your opinions in time, you cannot be matched, because matching already happened.
Nobody can undo this — not your instructor, not us. The pairs exist, and there is no place to put you.
Press Close.
Between assignments
Once the completion deadline passes, the assignment is archived and its topics and chats come off your screen. If your instructor has scheduled another, this says when it opens.
Past chats aren't browsable by default. Instructors can ask us to turn that on for a class.
Pick another situation above.
Two classes
One Sway account can be in several classes. The selector only appears when there's more than one, and everything below it belongs to whichever is chosen.
Nothing crosses over: separate topics, separate opinions, separate chats, separate deadlines, and separate suspensions.
Open the selector.
Switching class
Picking the other one reloads the app into it. If that class has an opinion survey you haven't done, you'll be sent straight to it.
Pick ECON 180.
Second class
A lecture course running QuickMatches: different statements, no deadlines, and no bearing on anything in the first class.
You'd rate these statements separately — your opinions don't carry across either.
Switch back with the selector.
Your chats
Everything in this class, newest first. An assignment chat is wrapped in a card carrying its deadline and progress; a QuickMatch chat is a plain row with neither.
Open the top one.
Account menu
Six items. Settings and Chats are the two halves of the app; Help and Feedback leave it for this website.
A suspended account quietly loses Help and Feedback and keeps the rest.
Press any of them.
Leaving Sway
Help and Feedback both open something on this website. Since this page is a drawing rather than the product, it says so instead.
See the feedback survey, or open the help bot for real.
Feedback survey
Reachable any time from the account menu, and separate from the survey after a chat. It goes to the researchers building Sway, not to your instructor, and it isn't linked to you.
Answering “yes” to the last question is how you get a reply from a person.
Press Submit.
Settings
Your name, your pronouns, your phone number, and six notification switches. The switches are worth a look: turning the wrong ones off is how students end up not knowing their partner replied. Texts need a phone number and push needs the mobile app; the rest work as soon as you have an account.
Some notifications can't be turned off at all — the receipt for your opinion survey, the notice that you've been matched, and the warning that a partner is waiting on you.
Open Permissions and sharing or Advanced settings.
Permissions and sharing
The two settings that decide what leaves your account.
The first is the one that matters for your grade: with it off, your instructor cannot see that you finished, so they cannot give you credit. It does not let them read your chats — nothing does.
The second is the research opt-in from the consent screen. Off is a perfectly ordinary choice and changes nothing about your experience.
Press Back.
Advanced settings
One button, which does exactly what it says. There's a browser confirm and then the account is gone.
It's blocked while you're in the middle of an assignment, so a partner can't be stranded by it.
Press Back.
every screen — 45, all reachable by clicking
Your first time
Opinion survey
Being matched
Chat
After the chat
When it goes wrong
Your account
what your instructor sees
Not your chat. Instructors cannot read transcripts, cannot see how you rated any statement, and cannot see anything you wrote in a survey. What they get is a spreadsheet with your name, whether your chat reached 100%, your understanding quiz score, whether you and your partner stayed on topic, and whether you left a partner waiting — and, separately, a de-identified report about the class as a whole. If you turn off the identity setting in Permissions and sharing, they don't get your name either, which also means they can't give you credit.
Two other things are worth knowing. Your chats are private between you and your partner, but Sway does check automatically that the conversation is engaging with the assigned topic, and that check is what your instructor sees the result of. And the opinion deadline is absolute: miss it and you cannot participate in that assignment, which no one can undo afterwards, so it is the one date to put in your calendar.
If something has gone wrong — you can't log in, your survey won't submit, you haven't been matched, your partner has vanished — the Sway help bot answers most of it and escalates the rest to us. There is more on the student resources page.
Up next
The same app from the other side, what other students say about it, and how to get set up.
The instructor app
Every screen your instructor sees, including exactly what the results spreadsheet contains.
Click around it →Real conversations
Published Sway chats, with permission. The best of them are among the best conversations students have all term.
Read some →Student resources
Coordinating with a partner, making good progress, and what to do when something breaks.
Read it →