Jul 15 5:20pm EST : We've received some questions in response to the notification e-mail sent today.
Q: How come I wasn't in the lottery?
Everyone who submitted worked examples was entered into the lottery. In fact, you received one "ticket" in
the lottery for every worked example. (A "worked example" has problem posed and at least one step
of a solution.)
Q: Where is a list of the winners?
For the privacy of the winners, their e-mail addresses cannot be shared. Everyone who participated
was assured that their information would not be shared.
Q: Why didn't you tell us sooner about the lottery?
Updates were necessary to the web site to handle the traffic from so many people returning.
Q: Why aren't you paying us like the web page said you would?
This is an unfortunate circumstance. This study was designed for up to 60 people, who were
each solicited individually and in very small forums. Unfortunately, someone took the URL and posted
it to different freebies and deals sites, whereupon thousands of people came to the site. Immediately
upon discovering this we shut the site down, but already over 1300 people had participated. This
lottery is the fairest way we could offer to compensate these participants we did not solicit.
Q: Why would I participate in research again when you got my submission and I didn't get anything?
This is a critical question. The trust between researchers and participants is vital to
the enterprise of research. Particularly so for this research since it depends on
people's generosity to the cause of education.
As explained above, this was an unforeseen situation and we have tried to provide a fair solution.
In fact, everyone who participated had a chance in the lottery. Some won and some didn't.
If you don't agree that the solution is fair, you may write us
to request that your submissions be deleted from the database. We originally were going to send an
e-mail offering this option to everyone before the lottery, but assumed that everyone would prefer
to be in the lottery than not.
If you have any additional questions or comments, you're welcome to write us.
Jun 20 6:00pm EST : It's been a long while but we've finally reached a resolution:
We wanted to provide a reward to all participants for their help in the study. There wasn't enough money to pay all the unsolicited participants in the same manner as the solicited participants, but we found a good compromise.
We secured more funds, enough to buy 50 gift cards of the maximum amount earnable in the study, $12. We then took all the worked example contributions that followed the directions and turned them each into a lottery ticket. Thus people who contributed more examples that followed the directions got more chances at winning. Then we randomly drew 50 of these tickets to determine 50 winners.
All 50 winners have been sent a gift certificate to Amazon.com. If you want another chance at a gift certificate for participating, you may be interested in the next study.
Thanks to everyone for participating!
Sep 17 10:22pm EST : I have a plan now and I'm waiting for approval from the Institutional Review Board. I will e-mail everyone with the plan when it is resolved.
Sep 15 10:40am EST : More good samaritans have written that it was also posted to the Freebie Galaxy mailing list and Spoofee. Many people have been writing with helpful information and advice. The most popular advice has been to not pay people who came to the experiment via a freebies site, since I never posted the link there. At the same time, I neglected to design the system to prevent this situation so I'm trying to think of something to do.
Sep 14 3:44pm EST : Good samaritans have written me that this experiment was posted to SlickDeals and FatWallet. Maybe this is a new corollary to the Slashdot effect.
Sep 14 3:00pm EST :
Between midnight this morning and 3pm this afternoon, over 1300 people participated in this experiment. Over the preceeding two weeks only 40 had. I had money allocated for 60 participants and at the initial rate of 3 per day was completely unprepared for this explosion of participation.
Overparticipation is a wonderful problem to have, except when you've said you will pay each participant. I am taking the site down now to seek advice on how to proceed (and figure out what happened).
In the meantime, if you would like to withdraw your participation you may e-mail me to request this.