Asynchronous workshop allocation method
Introduction
The workshop module currently assumes a synchronous work flow. All students progress through each
workshop stage simultaneously. This simultaneity is governed by a series of due dates or the manual
progression of phases. This process limits when students can interact with the workshop. For example,
all students must submit by the time the review phase is triggered, once the review phase has been
triggered, submission is no longer possible. While this synchronous sequence is appropriate for many
environments, there are situations where an asynchronous work flow would be desirable.
For example, consider a course where gamification principles have been applied. One principle of
gamification is allowing students to proceed at their own pace. However, given the synchronous nature
of the workshop module, students that finish early with all other elements of the course must wait until
workshop phase changes have been triggered before being able to progress in workshop assignments.
Likewise, slower students simply miss out on doing the assignment once they are locked out.
As another example, consider a course delivered in a corporate environment where students start the
course at disparate times. Students can “pop in” the course at any time. Traditionally, this would mean
that the student activities would be limited to individual content, quizzes and other activities. While a
discussion would be possible, it might be impractical because the student interaction might be
separated by months. A synchronous workshop would be completely impractical in this scenario as
progressing phases would lock out students who entered the course at a later date.
Proposal
To accommodate use cases like the two described, it is proposed that a workshop allocation method is
developed that is asynchronous. Such an allocation method would rely upon “pools” rather than
“phases”. Rather than move all students forward through the workshop steps simultaneously, students
would progress “just in time”. In other words, they would progress individually upon the completion of a
stage from one pool of students to another. In each pool, students would have similar characteristics.
For example, Student A begins the workshop activity by submitting a document. Upon submission, the
student’s document is immediately distributed to 3 students waiting in the review pool. Meanwhile,
Student A waits in the review pool until she receives a document to review. When a document is
available she is notified. After performing 3 reviews, she is progressed to the grading stage where she
waits for the 3 reviews to be performed on her paper. Finally, after she has received her scores, she is
progressed to the closed phase.
While it could be argued that this is not truly asynchronous because Student A must wait in specific
pools until other students act, participants are significantly less dependent upon, or limited by, timed or
manual phase changes that progress entire cohorts at a time. Instead, any other 3 students entering the
same stage would allow the student to progress in the workshop work flow. This would accommodate
students that move faster or slower than their cohorts as well as allow students to “drop in” to the
course at any time (assuming there is sufficient volume of students to allow for at least 3 to be in the
same stage at a time).
Also, this kind of asynchronous interaction could increase a student’s sense of community in a course
that might traditionally only contain content and individual activities. As students are able to review the
work of others and be reviewed, they can feel that they are not alone in the course.
Specifications


Paper allocation must be prioritized so that those papers that are oldest and have the fewest
reviews are allocated for review first
One must review x number of papers before being allowed to progress to the grading stage
Person Workflow
Receive notification
that a paper is ready
to review
Student Submits
Document
Are there any
papers ready
to review?
Wait until a paper
is available to
review
Grade paper
Receive notification
that a paper is ready
to review
Grade paper
Receive notification
that a paper is ready
to review
Grade paper
Has student
document
been reviewed
3 times?
Wait until all the
reviews are in
Student notified of
grade
Document Workflow
Reviewer grades
paper and
submits grade
Document
Submitted
Is there anyone
waiting to
review a
paper?
Document
Allocated and
Reviewers notified
Reviewer grades
paper and
submits grade
Have all 3
reviewers
submitted
grade?
Reviewer grades
paper and
submits grade
Wait until a student
is available to
review
Wait until all the
reviews are in
Grade submitted
and student
notified