Sway is motivated by J.S. Mill’s radical view that engaging deeply with opposing perspectives—even if they are considered offensive or false—is our best tool for understanding and solving complex problems. We're investigating how AI can scaffold student discussions across opposing perspectives and promote more nuanced thinking about important but polarizing topics. 

We're interested in civil discourse, but we're not just about keeping things civil. We aim to help students learn to reason and communicate more effectively. And while we support free speech in many contexts, we've designed Sway to impose constraints on language to enhance opportunities for constructive dialogue.  Rather than simply categorizing messages as acceptable or unacceptable (hate or non-hate), Sway classifies messages along a spectrum from constructive to unconstructive. This is important because there are different types of unconstructive speech that call for different kinds of practical responses.

Our long-term aim is to provide as many students as possible with a free and safe platform that discovers opportunities to not only engage meaningfully across differences, but to thrive on the process—as we know they can.

Sway is a messaging platform, like iMessage or WhatsApp, but it adds AI scaffolding to every chat.

First, Sway helps students with their language before their messages are sent. Suppose a student tries to send a message that’s inflammatory but still attempts to convey some idea worth discussing. Our AI automatically detects this and suggests a charitable rephrasing of the message. Rephrasings aim to capture the content and even the emotional tenor of the original, but in a more constructive way. This immediate feedback helps students learn how to express themselves better.

Second, every Sway chat involves Guide: an AI discussion facilitator. Guide is an active part of every Sway conversation, and it contributes in much the same way that an experienced teacher would. It can pose insightful questions to deepen students’ understanding, clarify student arguments, ensure students aren’t talking past each other, de-escalate tense moments, provide relevant factual information, and much more.

Guide's primary goal is to facilitate mutual understanding between students, rather than forcing agreement. This focus on understanding drives all of Guide's interactions and interventions.

Guide employs a range of strategies. It helps keep conversations on track with instructor-configured topics while posing thoughtful questions to deepen the discussion and encourage critical thinking. When needed, Guide clarifies arguments or statements made by students and manages group dynamics by intervening to address unproductive exchanges or encourage more balanced participation.

Additionally, Guide enriches discussions by providing context and, when appropriate, offering factual information from reliable sources. It prompts students to respond to each other's key points, fostering direct engagement. Importantly, Guide can recognize and address emotional content in exchanges to maintain a constructive atmosphere.

Adapting its communication style, Guide adjusts its tone and approach based on the flow of the conversation and student responses. It helps set an appropriate pace for the discussion, ensuring participants have space to express their views. By creating an environment where students can explore complex topics, challenge ideas respectfully, and gain deeper insights into different perspectives, Guide facilitates meaningful discussions even on controversial subjects. The ultimate aim is for students to emerge from these conversations with a richer, more nuanced understanding of both the topic and their peers' viewpoints.

We attempt to block all speech that would undermine the possibility of constructive disagreement. This includes slurs as well as clear threats, personal attacks, and mere insults that don't even attempt to further the conversation. We are always improving our models, and we encourage students to report messages in the app that they believe should be reviewed.

Sway's AI also suggests charitable rephrasings for messages that may be needlessly hostile or inflammatory while still trying to convey an idea worth discussing. The goal is to capture the content and even the emotional tenor of the original message, but to express it in a more constructive way. This provides students with instant feedback. Students are free to reject Sway's suggestions, but doing so will usually elicit a response from Guide.

This reflects our approach to classifying speech along a spectrum from constructive to unconstructive, rather than simply categorizing it as "hate speech" or "not hate speech." The aim is to create an environment where even highly controversial topics can be discussed and debated, but with guardrails that promote understanding and rationality rather than hostility and polarization.

Need more details?

We want students to feel comfortable on Sway, so messages are stored in an encrypted database by default and are only decrypted when students access them. This means the content of student chats is not accessible to anyone other than the students who participate in them. However, there are a couple of options:

Sway allows students to export their chat as a PDF which they can submit through your learning management system if you want to review the full conversations. And if you don't need to read the full transcripts, Sway provides useful metadata and analysis in the Instructor Report. This includes:

• Discussion depth, message and word counts per student

• AI-generated analysis to confirm students stayed on topic

• Visualizations of how students' understanding changes across chats

• Key areas where students found consensus and where they persistently disagreed (coming soon)

Sway also generates Understanding Quizzes for students at the end of each discussion to measure how well the students understood each other. The scores from these quizzes are available in the instructor reports.

If students elect to share their university-provisioned email addresses with you, you'll be able to match these data to specific students. Otherwise, students are identified only by random usernames.

Yes, it can be used for graded assignments. Sway Assignments are discussions between pairs of students on an instructor-specified topic. When instructors set up a discussion, they configure topic statement(s) that they would like students to discuss. They also specify the minimum duration that the discussion must last. Students then complete a brief survey indicating their attitudes towards these statements.

Using this information, Sway's algorithm matches students into discussion groups, specifically aiming to pair students with differing viewpoints. This approach helps create intellectually diverse groups where students are likely to encounter perspectives that differ from their own.

Currently, Sway only supports discussions of two students at a time (or, occasionally, three students when a class has an odd number of students). However, we expect to support larger discussion groups in the coming weeks.

To get access to Sway for your course, you should register your interest using this form.

Beginning in September 2024, we're providing free access to Sway for instructors who want to use it as part of college-level courses. Once you submit the form, we'll review your request. Our current aim is to fulfill all requests within two weeks of receipt. We are prioritizing requests from Heterodox Academy members.

We're contacting instructors who request access in the order in which requests are made, and we'll continue to provision Sway to new instructors for as long as our funding permits. When you're approved, you'll receive instructions on how to set up Sway for your course and how your students can create their accounts using their university-provisioned email addresses and an access code that you'll share with them. If you'd like to provide Sway to larger communities (e.g., incoming students or an entire campus), contact us at support@swaybeta.ai.

We're proud to partner with Heterodox Academy and are prioritizing access for HxA Communities. If you're interested in using Sway in community events or other settings, contact us at support@swaybeta.ai.

We are focused on higher education, but if you have an interesting use case, please let us know: support@swaybeta.ai.

The technical requirements for Sway are quite minimal:

• For students, pretty much any laptop, phone or tablet with an internet connection will work.

• Sway can run in a web browser on desktop computers.

• For mobile devices, iPhone and Android apps are coming soon (we'll announce on our website when they're available in the App Store and Play Store).

• For longer discussions that unfold over days or weeks, we recommend using the mobile app once it's available, as it will send notifications when there are new messages.

• For discussions that take place in concentrated sittings, we suggest using the web app with a full-sized keyboard.

Need more details?

At the end of each Sway discussion assignment, the platform automatically generates a quiz for each student. This quiz typically contains 4-5 questions that are designed to measure how well the students listened and understood each other.

The questions are dynamically generated based on the content of the conversation, focusing on key points and arguments made by each participant. This ensures that the quiz is relevant to the specific discussion that took place.

Understanding Scores can provide useful insights, but they are not a validated measure and should not be used for formal student evaluation. Instructors can see aggregated data on these understanding scores in their reports, which can help them gauge overall engagement and understanding across the class.

Need more details?

We want students to feel comfortable on Sway, so messages are stored in an encrypted database and are only decrypted when students access them. This means the content of student chats is not accessible to anyone other than the students who participate in them. However, there are a couple of options:

Sway allows students to export their chat as a PDF which they can submit through your learning management system if you want to review the full conversations. And if you don't need to read the full transcripts, Sway provides useful metadata and analysis in the Instructor Report. This includes:

• Discussion depth, message and word counts per student

• AI-generated analysis to confirm students stayed on topic

• Visualizations of how students' understanding changes across chats

• Key areas where students found consensus and where they persistently disagreed (coming soon)

Sway also generates Understanding Quizzes for students at the end of each discussion to measure how well the students understood each other. The scores from these quizzes are available in the instructor reports.

If students elect to share their university-provisioned email addresses with you, you'll be able to match these data to specific students. Otherwise, students are identified only by random usernames.

Need more details?

Instructors can set a minimum duration for discussions, but this time will not exactly correspond to how long students take. Because students send messages at different paces and their chats can unfold asynchronously over days and weeks, the minimum discussion duration should be understood as an informed estimate of how long the discussion would take if the students were focused on exchanging messages of a typical length at a typical pace in a synchronous chat.

This means, for example, that if an instructor sets the minimum duration to 40 minutes, students don't need to engage in a continuous 40-minute back-and-forth to complete the assignment. Instead, they can send messages at their own pace, and their assignment will be marked as complete once their chat is long enough that it would have taken them around 40 minutes if they had sat down and chatted continuously at a normal pace. 

Students are free to continue chatting (and periodically testing their understanding) even after meeting the instructor-set minimum requirements. This flexibility allows instructors to tailor the discussions to fit their course needs—they could be brief exchanges or more extended conversations spanning days or weeks. For discussions that unfold over an extended period, we recommend that students use the mobile app (coming soon) as it will send notifications when students receive new messages. For more concentrated discussions, the web app with a full-sized keyboard is likely preferable.

Need more details?

Sway is free for instructors and students to use. It is funded by research grants, so there's no cost to use it in college-level courses. We developed Sway to help as many students as possible learn the art of constructive disagreement.

If you're an instructor interested in using Sway, you can request free access through the registration form. We're providing access to instructors on a first-come, first-served basis for as long as our funding allows.

Need more details?