Group session requests
Queue so far has mainly focussed on giving help to individual students or individual predefined groups. For courses with a high TA load, we see a lot of repeating explanations, which could also be addressed with small group sessions (e.g. 6 students) with a single TA. This request is for Queue support for forming these group sessions dynamically.
There are a few ways to do so, but one thing that is necessary is some form of aggregation. That can be per assignment, but it is also possible that it needs to be subdivided further to be helpful to students. Perhaps TAs can indicate per assignment some selectable topics.
Then for how this actually works, there are a few different options:
Autogroup requests
Group requests from the same hall for the same question / topic automatically.
Benefits:
- Low effort
Downsides:
- Expected small groups
Grouped requests only
Let students only ask a question within a certain topic. The request becomes available to TAs whenever the requirements are met.
Ideally, the requirements change depending on the context. For example, if not enough students are asking about the same topic in the hall and the request is waiting for longer than the current waiting time, try to group within the building instead. Or decrease the minimum required number of students to form the request as waiting time goes past set thresholds (or dynamic based on current waiting time). If the lab is not busy (waiting time is low), perhaps the request should be split back up into individual requests since we have the capacity.
Benefits:
- Expected large groups
- Dynamically adapts to how busy the lab is (larger groups whenever not enough TAs, smaller groups/individual when enough TAs)
- Keeps waiting time low
Downsides:
- When grouping with other halls, students may miss the notification (no TA to mention name)
- Implementation difficulty
Other details
The TAs should always be able to turn the request of a selection of students in the group request back into individual requests (if group is a, b, c, d, they should be able to turn c and d into individual reqs, while keeping the group req for a and b). For example, if they find the questions are too diverse. This should put the student in the queue at the time the original request was made, to avoid long wait times.