# SmartGroup: A Tool for Small-Group Learning Activities
## 6 Discussion
### Future Opportunities  
Several features in the initial SmartGroup iteration were either not used or used in unintended ways during deployment. These include group reshuffling, appeal assessor, and processes. As discussed above, those are important features that need more field deployments and study.  
Reshuffling: SmartGroup's initial design was predicated on the idea that group reshuffling would lead to the sharing of diverse ideas and perspectives, reduce the severity of interpersonal conflicts, and prevent role stagnation; however, owing to the design of the course and the needs of the instructor, we could not test the group reshuffle feature in this deployment. Interestingly, we note that three respondents discussed having a student assignment submitter role develop; we are uncertain if these respondents belonged to the same group, but this does suggest that student roles may develop from prolonged consistent groups. Noting that student groups persisted for 10 weeks (i.e., longer than the maximum length for optimal learning [58]), we believe reshuffling may have reduced this development and should be deployed and evaluated fully. Just as we note that peer assessment provides benefits from both the assessee and assessor roles [46], we believe role stagnation within groups may unequally distribute learning opportunities and benefits; we intended to help promote student growth by ensuring each student experienced a diversity of roles and tasks, so even the limited evidence of role stagnation (i.e., dedicated submitters) we have may be cause for concern. However, examining student role development is outside of our current study's scope (i.e., an instructor's tool for facilitating SGLA adoption). Future dedicated research may be warranted regarding role development from peer group work assessment tool adoption.  
Appeal Assessors and Processes: The appeal process was used once during deployment; it was initiated because a peer assessor had mistakenly judged an assignment using the wrong rubric. If not for this human error, the appeal system would not have been used, as we know that most respondents were happy with the quality of received peer assessment feedback. This use of the system's appeal processes was hindered by the group's lack of in-system appeal consensus and resulted in said group going outside of the system to ask the instructor for an appeal directly. We believe the necessity of consensus for the appeal may not have been communicated clearly or often enough for the students to be familiar enough with the system to utilize its features; in the future, we believe this requirement can be communicated more clearly with reminders, especially considering how rarely students may use such processes. We further believe that the scarcity of appeals, independent of survey responses, represents successful feedback delivery and student satisfaction with peer assessments. However, we still believe the appeal assessor role offers novel active learning opportunities despite the scarcity of its use and should be pursued further.  
Design for the Benefits of Learners: Looking beyond the specific SmartGroup tool, the future education system designers should consider that the learners themselves might both contribute to and benefit from organizing and evaluating their own learning activities. We believe that this design direction is always available to some extent in developing new educational support systems.