Have you shared these with other local groups before now? Have they been adopted or adapted there?
I know Stanford EA sometimes use some of our old sheets with their modifications[1]. I believe they don’t focus as much on the same type of discussion-focused meetups that we do anymore, so unclear if they have solid metrics on how helpful the sheets are for them (though at least we’re saving them some time).
I’ve also shared our sheets (notably none of them are designed for any group in mind other than SB) online a few times. A lot of other local group organizers appeared excited about them but nobody followed up, so my guess is that uptake elsewhere probably is nonexistent or pretty low [2].
[1] SB EA sort of grew out of Stanford EA so it makes a lot of sense that our structure/content is sufficiently similar that it’s usable for their purposes.
[2] Notably I wasn’t really tracking that Stanford EA used our sheets until I explicitly asked a few weeks ago, so I guess it’s unlikely though not impossible if, eg, a few groups saw my posts on FB or our material on the EA Hub and adapted our sheets but never bothered contacting us.
If most other groups aren’t using the resources that currently exist, I’m not sure it’s a good use of time to create further “generic” resources—although I can appreciate your frustration with the amount of time it’s taking you!
Yeah I guess that’s the null hypothesis, thought it’s possible that people don’t use the current resources because it’s not “good” enough (eg, insufficiently accessible, too much jargon, too many local context specific stuff, etc).
Another thing to consider is “curriculum”, ie, right now discussion sheets, etc are shared to the internet without tips on how to adapt them (since local groups who wrote the sheets have enough local context/institutional knowledge on how the sheets should be used).
An interesting analogy is the “instructor’s edition” of textbooks, which iirc in the US K-12 system often has almost as much supplementary material as the textbook’s content itself!
I do think that currently there is low awareness of the Hub’s contents, and we will be working to help improve knowledge of what exists so that group organisers can use the resources better.
Thanks for the link and I agree that it’s a valuable resource for a group starting out!
That said, I wonder if there is an illusion of transparency here and maybe we’re talking past each other?
To be concrete, here are two problems I don’t think the Hub’s collection of resources currently fulfill.
1. My impression from looking through the content list on the EA Hub is that none of the sheets from the other groups can be directly adapted (even with significant modifications) for South Bay EA’s audience, since the questions are either a) too broad and intro-level (like the CEA sheets) or b) have a lot of mandatory reading that’s arguably not realistic for a heterogeneous group with many working professionals (eg the Harvard Arete stuff). I think SB EA is open to trying for more mandatory reading/high-engagement stuff among a subset of the members however. But right now if we are interested in an intermediate-level discussion on a topic that we haven’t previously discussed (eg, geo-engineering, hinge of history), we basically have to make the sheets ourselves.
Historically we’ve found this to be true even for common topics that the online EA community has discussed for many years.
This isn’t just a problem with the Hub to be clear; my group has been looking for a way to steal sheets from other groups since at least mid-2018. (It’s possible our needs are really idiosyncratic but it’d be a bit of a surprise if that’s true?)
2. I don’t think of any of the existing sheets or guiding material as curriculum, per se. At least when we were creating the sheets, my co-organizers and I mostly did things that “seemed reasonable” through a combination of intuition and rough guesses/surveys about what our members liked. At no point did we have a strong educational theory or built things with an eye towards the latest advances in the educational literature. I suspect other local groups are similar to us in that when they created sheets and organized discussions, they tried their best with limited time and care, rather than have a strong theory of education or change.
If I were to design things from scratch, I’d probably want to work in collaboration with eg, educational or edutech professionals who are also very familiar with EA (some of whom have expressed interest in this). It’s possible that EA material is so out-of-distribution that being familiar with the pedagogical literature isn’t helpful, but I feel like it’s at least worth trying?
Thanks for clarifying, I get what you’re saying now!
TL:DR: while I’m in agreement that these things would be valuable, in the current state it wouldn’t make sense to prioritise them when there’s a lot of value to be found in increasing awareness of existing resources, even if they are imperfect and writing about resources where there currently are none for common events.
I agree that there is a severe lack of resources, we actually link to the South Bay discussion lists (unfortunately since you made the resources there isn’t anything new regarding discussions sheets). We are also slowly adding and developing them as I am running a series of guided discusisons for the Philly group.
Given where we were at with the resources up until recently, the most valuable and time efficient thing to do was to organise existing resources and then evaluate what the most pressing gaps in knowledge were. i.e. it was better to have some resources for all the basic group activities—be that running discussions, how to host events, moderating talks, venue, food and logistics, leadership structure etc. As you can see, a long list of topics! the goal was to consolidate movement-wide knowledge, and have resources well-organised and accessible.
I don’t think your group was unique with regards to needing resources, although I think other groups may do more socials and other kinds of meetups that require less preparation.
I agree that there isn’t a curriculum, and that taking lessons from education science would be very useful and valuable. I think that we can definitely work to make EA principles and ideas more accessible by a large margin. Currently, there aren’t enough people working on group building resources to do something like this, and I believe that just improving the knowledge of existing resources will provide the most value to group organisers. That being said, Catherine, who is in charge of the Resources team, does have an education background, and I think that has definitely influenced our work positively!
I know Stanford EA sometimes use some of our old sheets with their modifications[1]. I believe they don’t focus as much on the same type of discussion-focused meetups that we do anymore, so unclear if they have solid metrics on how helpful the sheets are for them (though at least we’re saving them some time).
I’ve also shared our sheets (notably none of them are designed for any group in mind other than SB) online a few times. A lot of other local group organizers appeared excited about them but nobody followed up, so my guess is that uptake elsewhere probably is nonexistent or pretty low [2].
[1] SB EA sort of grew out of Stanford EA so it makes a lot of sense that our structure/content is sufficiently similar that it’s usable for their purposes.
[2] Notably I wasn’t really tracking that Stanford EA used our sheets until I explicitly asked a few weeks ago, so I guess it’s unlikely though not impossible if, eg, a few groups saw my posts on FB or our material on the EA Hub and adapted our sheets but never bothered contacting us.
If most other groups aren’t using the resources that currently exist, I’m not sure it’s a good use of time to create further “generic” resources—although I can appreciate your frustration with the amount of time it’s taking you!
Yeah I guess that’s the null hypothesis, thought it’s possible that people don’t use the current resources because it’s not “good” enough (eg, insufficiently accessible, too much jargon, too many local context specific stuff, etc).
Another thing to consider is “curriculum”, ie, right now discussion sheets, etc are shared to the internet without tips on how to adapt them (since local groups who wrote the sheets have enough local context/institutional knowledge on how the sheets should be used).
An interesting analogy is the “instructor’s edition” of textbooks, which iirc in the US K-12 system often has almost as much supplementary material as the textbook’s content itself!
Hi Linch, we actually have a guide to using discussion sheets on the eahub now: https://resources.eahub.org/events/articles/discussion-tips/
I do think that currently there is low awareness of the Hub’s contents, and we will be working to help improve knowledge of what exists so that group organisers can use the resources better.
Thanks for the link and I agree that it’s a valuable resource for a group starting out!
That said, I wonder if there is an illusion of transparency here and maybe we’re talking past each other?
To be concrete, here are two problems I don’t think the Hub’s collection of resources currently fulfill.
1. My impression from looking through the content list on the EA Hub is that none of the sheets from the other groups can be directly adapted (even with significant modifications) for South Bay EA’s audience, since the questions are either a) too broad and intro-level (like the CEA sheets) or b) have a lot of mandatory reading that’s arguably not realistic for a heterogeneous group with many working professionals (eg the Harvard Arete stuff). I think SB EA is open to trying for more mandatory reading/high-engagement stuff among a subset of the members however. But right now if we are interested in an intermediate-level discussion on a topic that we haven’t previously discussed (eg, geo-engineering, hinge of history), we basically have to make the sheets ourselves.
Historically we’ve found this to be true even for common topics that the online EA community has discussed for many years.
This isn’t just a problem with the Hub to be clear; my group has been looking for a way to steal sheets from other groups since at least mid-2018. (It’s possible our needs are really idiosyncratic but it’d be a bit of a surprise if that’s true?)
2. I don’t think of any of the existing sheets or guiding material as curriculum, per se. At least when we were creating the sheets, my co-organizers and I mostly did things that “seemed reasonable” through a combination of intuition and rough guesses/surveys about what our members liked. At no point did we have a strong educational theory or built things with an eye towards the latest advances in the educational literature. I suspect other local groups are similar to us in that when they created sheets and organized discussions, they tried their best with limited time and care, rather than have a strong theory of education or change.
If I were to design things from scratch, I’d probably want to work in collaboration with eg, educational or edutech professionals who are also very familiar with EA (some of whom have expressed interest in this). It’s possible that EA material is so out-of-distribution that being familiar with the pedagogical literature isn’t helpful, but I feel like it’s at least worth trying?
Thanks for clarifying, I get what you’re saying now!
TL:DR: while I’m in agreement that these things would be valuable, in the current state it wouldn’t make sense to prioritise them when there’s a lot of value to be found in increasing awareness of existing resources, even if they are imperfect and writing about resources where there currently are none for common events.
I agree that there is a severe lack of resources, we actually link to the South Bay discussion lists (unfortunately since you made the resources there isn’t anything new regarding discussions sheets). We are also slowly adding and developing them as I am running a series of guided discusisons for the Philly group.
Given where we were at with the resources up until recently, the most valuable and time efficient thing to do was to organise existing resources and then evaluate what the most pressing gaps in knowledge were. i.e. it was better to have some resources for all the basic group activities—be that running discussions, how to host events, moderating talks, venue, food and logistics, leadership structure etc. As you can see, a long list of topics! the goal was to consolidate movement-wide knowledge, and have resources well-organised and accessible.
I don’t think your group was unique with regards to needing resources, although I think other groups may do more socials and other kinds of meetups that require less preparation.
I agree that there isn’t a curriculum, and that taking lessons from education science would be very useful and valuable. I think that we can definitely work to make EA principles and ideas more accessible by a large margin. Currently, there aren’t enough people working on group building resources to do something like this, and I believe that just improving the knowledge of existing resources will provide the most value to group organisers. That being said, Catherine, who is in charge of the Resources team, does have an education background, and I think that has definitely influenced our work positively!