Regarding the concern of broad distribution of books being low-impact due to low completion rates/readership/engagement, do you have a sense of how impactful reading groups are for books when coupled with broad distribution? They can have a high initial fixed cost and then pretty low marginal costs for repeated run-throughs (e.g. it takes a long time to make discussion sheets for the first time you run the reading group, but afterwards you have them ready, create breakout rooms, and if you don’t participate in them this requires minimal effort/time).
I had the assumption that reading groups are much less impactful and lower quality without having a facilitator in each breakout room. Has EA Stanford experimented with reading groups without a trained facilitator? If so, how are these done—do you just give them discussion questions to talk about with each other? Would a participant be assigned as a facilitator per breakout room?
Regarding the concern of broad distribution of books being low-impact due to low completion rates/readership/engagement, do you have a sense of how impactful reading groups are for books when coupled with broad distribution? They can have a high initial fixed cost and then pretty low marginal costs for repeated run-throughs (e.g. it takes a long time to make discussion sheets for the first time you run the reading group, but afterwards you have them ready, create breakout rooms, and if you don’t participate in them this requires minimal effort/time).
I had the assumption that reading groups are much less impactful and lower quality without having a facilitator in each breakout room. Has EA Stanford experimented with reading groups without a trained facilitator? If so, how are these done—do you just give them discussion questions to talk about with each other? Would a participant be assigned as a facilitator per breakout room?