Discussion Facilitation: Participation Equity Simulator

Facilitator Techniques

Wait time 3.0 s

Cold-call probability 30%

Redirect-dominant threshold 3 turns

Students 10

Discussion State

Turn

Unique speakers

0 / 10

Equity (Gini)

0.00

Avg wait before call

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Press Run or Step to start the discussion.

How it works

Each student agent i has a fixed confidence c_i ∈ [0,1] and a running engagement e_i that decays while others talk and rises after they speak or are invited. Every turn, each silent student's self-volunteer propensity is

p_i = c_i · e_i · (1 − exp(−t_silent / wait_time))

so nobody volunteers before the wait-time has elapsed, and quieter/low-confidence students need longer silence to build up the courage to speak — this models real "wait time" pedagogy (Rowe, 1972): longer teacher pauses measurably increase the length and diversity of student responses.

If no one volunteers, the facilitator may cold-call (with the set probability) the student with the lowest cumulative airtime, directly boosting equity. If one student has held the floor for more turns than the redirect threshold, the facilitator interrupts and redirects to the least-heard student instead.

Participation equity is measured with the Gini coefficient of cumulative speaking turns across students (0 = everyone spoke equally, 1 = one student dominated entirely):

G = Σ_i Σ_j |x_i − x_j| / (2 n Σ_i x_i)

The 3D scene draws students seated in a circle; the active speaker rises and glows, and a line is drawn on the table each time one speaker's turn is followed by another's — building a live discussion network graph whose density shows how much the conversation is student-to-student versus routed through the facilitator.

Currently speaking Cold-called by facilitator Silent / listening

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