Developing Participation Equity Criteria: A Fresh Perspective via Turn-Taking Simulation

Abstract

Participation equity plays a crucial role in shaping students’ cognitive and social benefits derived from collaborative efforts. Nevertheless, a lack of quantitative benchmarks for assessing the fairness of group participation persists. This study addresses this gap by employing a simulation-based approach to establish measurable criteria, leveraging empirical data to estimate model parameters. Our research introduces evaluation metrics for gauging participation and opportunity inequalities across varying numbers of turns, derived from the simulation outcomes. The practical significance of our findings lies in providing specific guidelines for evaluating participation equity in collaborative learning and problem-solving contexts. Additionally, from a theoretical standpoint, our study highlights the sensitivity of evaluating participation equity to the number of turns and offers insights into the dynamics of human dialogue. We also discuss limitations and avenues for future research in this area.