What should happen to 'rejected' learners?

[armandofox]

When forming groups, the algorithm is:

• form as many groups as possible of the preferred size
• then form as many groups as possible of the minimum size
• there may then be some singletons left over.

We could just leave these singletons in the waiting room, and they will have dibs to be pulled off the list the next time the waiting room is processed. Would that make sense? The alternative is to kick them out, so that when their timer runs out it will say "Sorry, no group available for you to join, please try again later."

Which one would be more learner-friendly/less annoying? (Keep in mind that if the minimum group size is 1 person, this problem doesn't arise)

[luckyx1]

Is the idea to not have any singleton runs at all? If that is the case, then I vote for "they will have dibs to be pulled off the list the next time the waiting room is processed. "
But if the idea is to not have singletons(which doesn't agree with the data we collected before), then just state something like "This study requires groups of two or more peers. Currently you are the only one left waiting, please wait or try again later." Or something formal but straight to the point.

[chiaracoetzee]

Giving them dibs on groups in future sessions is nice but not absolutely necessary. Another simple solution is to just shuffle the list of waiting people before forming groups. That way it will be unlikely that any one person will be rejected more than twice (provided there are enough people present to form groups).

[armandofox]

OK. At the moment, the default order in which the waiting room is processed is by student's arrival time in the task anyway, and people left out of groups are asked to come back and retry the task later.

Giving them dibs on groups in future sessions is nice but not absolutely necessary. Another simple solution is to just shuffle the list of waiting people before forming groups. That way it will be unlikely that any one person will be rejected more than twice (provided there are enough people present to form groups).

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