Effortlessly Update Paused Experiment Behavior
Ever found yourself managing an experiment and wishing you could tweak its behavior after it's already paused? Well, get ready to celebrate! We're diving deep into a fantastic new feature that lets you update the pause behavior of an already-paused experiment without having to restart the whole shebang. This means you can fine-tune how existing enrollments are managed, giving you more flexibility and control. Let's explore how this works and why it's a game-changer for experiment managers.
Why Update Pause Behavior? The Flexibility You Need
Imagine this: you've paused an experiment, maybe for a mid-course correction or a quick analysis. Now, you realize you want to change how the students currently enrolled should be handled. Do you want them to stick with what they're doing, or should they be assigned a new condition? Before this update, your options were limited. You might have had to un-pause, make the change, and then re-pause, which is cumbersome and can mess with your data integrity. The ability to update the pause behavior directly addresses this. It's all about giving you, the experiment manager, the power to adapt your strategy on the fly. This feature ensures that when an experiment is in that 'paused' state, you can still communicate your intentions clearly for the ongoing participants. It’s like having a remote control for your paused experiments, allowing you to adjust the settings without disrupting the entire show. We understand that experiment management isn't always a straight line; it involves adjustments, learning, and adapting. This update is a significant step towards making that process smoother and more intuitive. The core idea is to separate the status of the experiment (paused) from its behavior upon being paused. This distinction is crucial for maintaining control and ensuring that your experiments align with your evolving research goals. By allowing these modifications, we're not just adding a button; we're enhancing the underlying logic that governs how experiments behave when they're not actively running. This means more precision in your research and less administrative overhead for you.
Understanding the New 'Pause Behavior' Setting
So, what exactly are we updating? When an experiment is paused, it can now have a clearly defined pause behavior. Think of it as a set of instructions for what happens to the participants who are already enrolled when the experiment hits a pause. There are two primary options, and the system will now clearly display which one is active:
- Continue: This is the simpler of the two. If the 'Continue' behavior is selected, participants currently in the experiment will simply remain in their current assigned conditions. No changes happen to their experience regarding the experiment. They just keep going as they were before the pause.
- Assign: This option offers more control. When 'Assign' is chosen, all currently enrolled students will receive a specified condition moving forward. This means you can decide, even after pausing, which condition all participants should adhere to. This is incredibly useful if, for instance, you paused to analyze results and decided to steer all participants towards a specific, more promising condition for further observation or a controlled next step.
Internally, this setting is managed by a field called postExperimentRule. This field holds the key to defining whether participants should continue or be assigned a new condition. The beauty of this update is that it doesn't change the experiment's status. If it's paused, it stays paused. We are only modifying the rule that governs participant behavior during that pause. This is a subtle but critical distinction that preserves the integrity of your experiment's timeline and status reporting. The user interface will now reflect this setting clearly, showing you at a glance what the 'Pause Behavior' is. And, importantly, there's an easy way to change it if needed.
Bringing the Feature to Life: Implementation Details
Implementing this new functionality involves a few key areas within the CarnegieLearning Web platform. The goal is to make it intuitive for users while ensuring the backend logic is robust. Let's break down the technical steps:
1. Displaying the Pause Behavior on the Overview
The first point of interaction is the experiment's overview page. We need a way to show users the current pause behavior when an experiment is paused. This will be located in the experiment-overview-details-section-card.component. Here’s how it will work:
- Conditional Display: The
