rescuing a stalled chat
A student writes to say their partner has gone quiet and the deadline is tomorrow. From the Students tab you can offer them a guide to finish the conversation with; it takes about thirty seconds, and the student still completes the assignment.
The ordinary case — the whole assignment, from the student's side — is doing an assignment, and managing an assignment covers the same screens in full.
A drawing that moves between a student's inbox, the student's own Sway screen and your manage screen, one 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.
FromRiley <[email protected]>
SentWed Sep 16, 8:42 PM
Sway assignment — my partner hasn't replied
Hi Professor Rivera,
I'm sorry to bother you. I messaged my Sway partner on Monday, again on Tuesday, and again this morning, and they haven't replied to any of them. The assignment is due tomorrow night and I'm working all day tomorrow, so I can't leave it until the last minute.
Is there anything I can do? I don't want to lose the credit for something I have been trying to do.
Riley
Deadline: Thu Sep 17, 11:59 PM
Progress40%
Sun
Sun
Mon
Tue
Wed
Enter a message
roster
| Student | Status | |
|---|---|---|
| Jordan (jalvarez) |
75% |
|
| Riley (rchen) |
40% |
|
| Morgan (mosei) |
75% |
|
| Tess (tfarrow) |
40% |
|
| Kai (kwhitfield) |
60% |
|
| Devon (dpark) |
60% |
Deadline: Thu Sep 17, 11:59 PM
Progress40%
Sun
Wed
Enter a message
Deadline: Thu Sep 17, 11:59 PM
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” 🤓
Enter a message
Scroll, or press space
You're about to follow one email from a student through to the screen they end up on.
Pressing the space bar goes to the next screen, or you can scroll.
01 The email
A student's partner has gone quiet, and the email usually arrives with a day or two left. The student has done everything asked of them.
There's something you can do about it, and it takes about thirty seconds. Don't wait: the deadline is hard, and a student in this position can't finish the assignment on their own.
02 What Riley is looking at
This is Riley's own screen, drawn here so you know what's behind the email. You can't see it. Transcripts are never shown to instructors, and nothing on your side opens a student's chat.
Three messages sent on three days, nothing back since Sunday, and the meter stuck at 40% — it only moves when both students contribute, so one person messaging into silence cannot move it at all.
Riley cannot fix this. There is no way to ask for a different partner, and no way to finish alone.
how long is too long?
A partner quiet for a few hours is usually not gone, and a day is not unusual for a chat that was always going to be asynchronous. Three unanswered messages across three days, with the deadline tomorrow, is gone. Sway itself uses a similar judgment — what it does without you is a walkthrough of its own.
03 Your Students tab
Your manage screen, on the Students tab. Every student who has signed up is here by first name, and the Status beside each one shows how far their chat has got.
This is where the email is confirmed or not. Riley and Tess are both stuck at 40% while the other two pairs are at 60% and 75% — the meter only moves when both students contribute, so a stalled pair shows up as a row that has stopped climbing next to rows that haven't.
The row you want is the student who wrote to you — Riley — not the partner who went quiet.
why Tess's row reads the same as Riley's
Both halves of a stalled pair show the same percentage, because it is the pair's progress and one person messaging into silence cannot move it. The status does not say which of them went quiet, and it won't say Inactive until Sway's own check runs near the completion deadline. Until then the only thing telling you who stopped is the student who wrote to you — you can't check it against the conversation, because instructors never see one.
if the row has no menu
Both actions need the student to have shared their identity with you, so a row marked “identity not shared” cannot be acted on. Request All Identities, at the bottom of the tab, emails a permission link to everyone who hasn't granted it yet.
04 Offer Chat with Guide
This offers Riley the opportunity to complete the assignment by debating one-on-one with Guide. Nothing happens until Riley accepts the offer.
A conversation between two students who disagree is what the assignment is for. This is the fallback for when that conversation definitely cannot happen.
when it does not apply
Guide is never used to fill an odd headcount at matching time; this is only for a student who was matched with a real partner who then stopped taking part. It is also deliberately not offered to a student who missed the opinion deadline, so that nobody has a reason to skip the deadline and talk to Guide instead of a classmate.
05 Partner Action
Helping one student can leave the other unaccounted for, so Sway asks about them in the same step. Tess hasn't told you anything — she has simply gone quiet — so keep the default: she gets the same offer Riley did, by email as well as a banner, and can still finish if she comes back.
- Chat with Guide, the default. Both students can finish.
- End Participation excuses the partner from this assignment with no penalty, and is the right choice when the partner is the one who told you they can't take part.
- Suspend Account does that and also blocks them from the next assignment.
Nothing happens to Tess until Riley accepts the offer.
how this shows up in the spreadsheet
Tess shows UNKNOWN in the Abandoned partner column rather than TRUE or FALSE: once you have intervened, Sway can no longer judge whether she would have abandoned the chat on her own. Riley, who finished with Guide, is not marked that way. The assignment management walkthrough goes through the whole spreadsheet.
06 What Riley sees
This is everything Riley sees: a banner over the chat, and an email saying the same thing. Riley can decline it and keep waiting for Tess — some students do.
Your job is finished at this point. You do not need to tell Riley you have done it.
07 Chatting with Guide
Riley accepts, and the conversation carries on in the same window, from where it stopped. Guide has read what was said before, so Riley doesn't have to start over.
Progress works exactly as it did, and the chat completes the same way: the quiz and the post-chat survey follow, and the assignment counts.
what happens next
Riley finishes the chat with Guide, takes the understanding quiz written from that conversation, and completes the assignment. In the results spreadsheet their Chat partner column reads “Tess (tfarrow) (continued with Guide)”, and their progress and quiz score are ordinary. The row does not record that you intervened.
Sway does some of this without you. If a partner goes quiet it warns them, and if they stay quiet it offers the student left behind the same Chat with Guide you just offered, and suspends the one who went quiet. Leaving a partner waiting is that story from the other side. You did the same thing earlier, because Riley asked.
The way to get fewer of these emails is to say two things in your assignment text: message your partner within a day of the opinion deadline, and agree a time straight away. Stalled chats are often two students who each assumed the other would start.
Up next
The rest of the manage screen, and the same story from the other side.
Managing an assignment
The reference tour of the screens above: the roster, suspending and reactivating an account, and the results spreadsheet.
Read it →Leaving a partner waiting
What Sway does on its own when nobody writes to you: the warnings it sends the quiet student, and the suspension at the end of them.
Read it →Doing an assignment
The ordinary case, from the student's side: the opinion survey, the chat, the quiz and the survey at the end.
Read it →