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And professors say it’s creating more productive discussions on hot-button topics like immigration, abortion
Immigration policy, abortion and gun regulations are just some of the topics often deemed too controversial for everyday conversations. But what if there was a way that taught college students to talk about these issues in a respectful manner?
Simon Cullen, a former professor at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, said that’s exactly what drove him to create Sway.
“There’s no way for political dissent in a complicated pluralistic democracy like ours to actually get its message out if it can’t engage productively with a broad range of diverse viewpoints,” Cullen told The College Fix in a recent interview.
Sway is an interactive chat platform that pairs two users together who have opposing views on a topic. It gives the pair a platform to debate their views while having Guide, an AI tool that Cullen helped develop, monitor their discussion to ensure each side is being fair and respectful.
“The idea is that Guide is going to be there to deepen the conversation, but it really is a conversation between you and your partner,” Cullen said.
Cullen is also the co-founder and president of Disagree Wisely, a public charity advancing research to help people engage in their differences productively. He thought of the idea when he was teaching a class at Carnegie Mellon University called “Dangerous Ideas in Science and Society.” He then worked with Nicholas DiBella, an AI research scientist at Heterodox Academy and chief technology and operations officer of Disagree Wisely, to develop the vision.
“The idea was just to really give the students a structured academic space, structured by norms of respect, to have those discussions,” Cullen said.
A key consideration of the developers was the type of platform Sway is on. While many may think in-person or video chat may be the best way to debate their ideas, Cullen said he believed text was the best outlet for their platform.
Not only does text give people a one-on-one environment for people to speak in, but it also allows time to think through answers before responding.
“It’s a format that can be lively and fun and it is the one in which you can feel safest,” Cullen said.
Sway first piloted its program in the spring of 2024 and was implemented into its first classroom at UCLA in fall 2024.
Since then, about 100 classrooms around the country have used the program to encourage students to share, debate and dive deep into conversations about their views.
Gary Comstock, a philosophy and ethics professor at North Carolina State University, has used Sway for one year in his classroom. Comstock told The Fix he wanted to use it as a solution to create a less polarized environment in his campus.
“I have learned after 50 years of teaching that the best thing I can do for my students is to give them practice in speaking with people they disagree with,” Comstock said.
While Comstock has some classes that are only about 15 to 20 students, other classes he teaches are nearing 800. He said Sway is a great way for students to have these one-on-one conversations, even in such a big lecture.
Comstock assigns six Sway assignments per semester, each one focusing on a different controversial topic. Students are paired with one other person in their class and given a list of statements surrounding the chosen topic. They then have to go through each statement and state if they agree or disagree.
Comstock admitted he was a little skeptical about students in his class actually disagreeing with each other on the topics. He attributed this to North Carolina State University being more left-leaning.
But, he found that just because students may agree on the surface level of a broad topic, doesn’t mean they will agree about everything within the topic.
“If you have enough statements, you’ll find, even in a class as small as 20, that there’s an even split on one or another of those [issues],” Comstock said.
The Sway website quotes students as liking the platform because it allowed them to see common ground they shared with the opposing side. Some students also said they liked how the program gave them time to respond and had a facilitator ready to jump in if things got ugly.
“It made me more confident to stand on my view without backing down or starting to argue in a very emotional way and it gave me time to think about my response. I loved it,” one anonymous user commented on the website.
The website also shows analytics of each participant’s view of the topic before and after the facilitated conversation. According to the website, the gap between students’ views shrinks about 67% of the time, stays the same about 19%, and widens about 14% of the time.
While Cullen said it is still unclear if Sway changes the behavior of students in the classroom, he is working on a new study that will soon answer that question.
He said the behavior will be measured by recording students’ Sway conversations, while also recording student’s in-class conversations when there is no Guide facilitator to help them out.
However, based on anecdotal data Cullen has heard from instructors already, he believes the study will be a “slam dunk,” as many teachers have already seen the change in their classroom.
“It isn’t that surprising once you think about it, when a whole lot of students show up actually having thought things through, having had a half an hour where they (were) confronted by someone, maybe they got to test the first idea that comes into their mind, often not the best for any of us,” Cullen said. “They show up with more to say, they show up more comfortable saying it, more confident to make their contributions and consequently the instructors report to us that they have many more voices in the classroom.”
Comstock is one of the instructors who has seen that change in his classroom. He said it makes the classroom very exciting to be in because every student is engaged, not just a select few.
“If they do it, a couple of Sway conversations first,” Comstock said. “They’ve had a chance not only just to say what they think, but also to type it out and correct it and revise it before they commit to it and send it to the other person…And they come to class with all of that experience behind them.”
Cullen said he is also working on another version called Sway Classroom for high school and middle school classes. He anticipates that program to pilot in January 2027.
As to concerns about the younger generation’s reliance on AI, he said Sway’s use of the technology is different.
“It’s a fundamentally different paradigm to the style of AI, where (AI’s) role is playing an oracle that can answer any question, solve any problem – that is not Sway,” Cullen said. “Sway’s facilitator, Guide, will not answer any question…But it’s really there to push students to reason more.”
Cullen said ultimately he hopes the platform can be used for fun, too.
“They often go in nervous, they often go in with trepidation, but in fact they frequently have the experience that I had so many times growing up and still have today,” Cullen said. “When I actually do sit down and have those conversations with the people who don’t share my views, they’re often some of the most interesting, exciting and joyful discussions I’ve ever had.”
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