I don’t have strong opinions on a 4-week fellowship, no! I think my quick take would be that (a) it’s harder to teach the core EA ideas well in 4x1.5h sessions, (b) it’s harder to create a social community/have people become friends in 4 weeks, and (c) the group of people who’d commit to a 4-week program but not an 8-week program is relatively small, at least in a university group context. But I’m not too sure about this. It also seems plausible to me that 4 weeks could be better in contexts like professional or city groups.
I’d be excited to see a group running both and comparing the outcomes (e.g., in terms of retention, later engagement, number of friends made, whether participants say they’d like a shorter/longer program).
Hey I’m one of the organisers of the PISE Fellowship and would like to weigh in on some of the points you made: (a) I agree that it’s hard to cover all core ideas of EA well in 4 weeks. For example we were not able to fit in animal welfare. So for a 4 week model it seems essential to offer things like discussion groups, in depth fellowships, etc. so people can keep learning after the fellowship is over. (b) From my experience friendships and social engagement come more from social activities or working together than from a fellowship (might be different for others). Again here it seems essential when running a 4 week fellowship to offer other ways of socialising and engaging. PISE does this by organising big social events and by recruiting people into commitees after the fellowship ends. (c) Anecdotally, multiple people mentioned that they felt like 4 weeks was not a big commitment and joined because of that. I hope we soon have some data that can shed some light on this question. There will be a longer post about our experience with the 4 week fellowship soon.
In the newly founded EA Delft we are planning to employ a different model. We will first run a 4 week intro fellowship (and advertise it as 4 weeks), but then throughout offer people to continue the fellowship for another 4 weeks. This way the people only willing to join for 4 weeks will join, but the ones willing to do the full 8 weeks will get to dive into more topics. We will share our experience and the results we get with this method at some point.
Thanks for compiling all of these!
I’m curious if you have any strong opinions on a 4-week fellowship model that some groups use (e.g. Positive Impact Society Erasmus)
No worries!
I don’t have strong opinions on a 4-week fellowship, no! I think my quick take would be that (a) it’s harder to teach the core EA ideas well in 4x1.5h sessions, (b) it’s harder to create a social community/have people become friends in 4 weeks, and (c) the group of people who’d commit to a 4-week program but not an 8-week program is relatively small, at least in a university group context. But I’m not too sure about this. It also seems plausible to me that 4 weeks could be better in contexts like professional or city groups.
I’d be excited to see a group running both and comparing the outcomes (e.g., in terms of retention, later engagement, number of friends made, whether participants say they’d like a shorter/longer program).
Hey I’m one of the organisers of the PISE Fellowship and would like to weigh in on some of the points you made:
(a) I agree that it’s hard to cover all core ideas of EA well in 4 weeks. For example we were not able to fit in animal welfare. So for a 4 week model it seems essential to offer things like discussion groups, in depth fellowships, etc. so people can keep learning after the fellowship is over.
(b) From my experience friendships and social engagement come more from social activities or working together than from a fellowship (might be different for others). Again here it seems essential when running a 4 week fellowship to offer other ways of socialising and engaging. PISE does this by organising big social events and by recruiting people into commitees after the fellowship ends.
(c) Anecdotally, multiple people mentioned that they felt like 4 weeks was not a big commitment and joined because of that. I hope we soon have some data that can shed some light on this question.
There will be a longer post about our experience with the 4 week fellowship soon.
In the newly founded EA Delft we are planning to employ a different model. We will first run a 4 week intro fellowship (and advertise it as 4 weeks), but then throughout offer people to continue the fellowship for another 4 weeks. This way the people only willing to join for 4 weeks will join, but the ones willing to do the full 8 weeks will get to dive into more topics. We will share our experience and the results we get with this method at some point.