My Thoughts on SEC Season 20
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The Engagement Challenge Season 20 is quite a whizz. Although it needs some rebranding as it's more of an academia now than an engagement contest. Besides users, Steemit team also seems to be thrilled about this new project.
The emphasis on the Teaching Teams is deliberate as we believe this could become a USP for Steem.
I am impressed by the variety of courses and the efforts the teachers are putting into each lesson. If time allows, I am very much tempted to upgrade and learn some new skills myself. Who wouldn't? When such courses and one-to-one feedback from the teachers themselves cost you hundreds of bucks on other online or offline academic websites or institutions.
The beauty of these courses (besides the obvious, they're free) is that you get rewarded for your hardwork along with the teacher and the blockchain will ensure these courses stay here forever so that anyone can come back and learn something without the need to enroll and meet a deadline.
Having said that, I have a few concerns which I wanted to share here but have been rethinking and mainly procrastinating. I will come straight to the point now...
Let's not forget that Steemit is a social media platform. Each user has a different purpose here. The most common examples are:
- Earning
- Building
- Learning
- Recreational
This platform must cater to the diverse needs of its users. As much as I want to learn a new skill, my current frame of mind only wants to use Steemit for relaxing and recreational purposes. A few weeks later, I might feel more focused and would want to open and catch up on a course, or a few decades later, I might feel like knitting sweaters for my grandkids, and then I wouldn't have to worry because I can simply follow the free knitting course on Steem. ;-)
These lessons are precious knowledge that needs to be preserved. Ok, it's on the blockchain; it's already written on stone. What I mean is, it should be easily accessible at all times - now and 20 years later.
At the same time, it shouldn't scare users who are not here for educational purposes. A developer who comes home after his 9-5 wouldn't want to unwind browsing mundane posts like SEC Dev Homework XYZ.
Most likely, it doesn't bother highly career-oriented people, but there are always some people (possibly more) who come online to declutter their brains and disconnect from their real lives.
Solution?
Continue these educational courses but maybe dedicate a community to this kind of content like Steem Academy where all the lessons are catalogued subject-wise. Steemitblog could also post their weekly announcements in that community.
Benefit?
- Courses will be organized and easily accessible.
Now this doesn't solve the problem of seeing SEC Engagement Challenge XYZ titled 5 homework posts in a row on my feed. If I'm to learn a skill, naturally, I would only be interested in the teacher's lesson, not in the dozen homework posts, unless the nature of the course makes me want to check what others have done and discuss something (engage) under their posts.
Solution?
I am thinking as I write... How about students do their homework off-chain (Google Docs) and share the link under the parent (lesson) post in a comment? The teacher could leave feedback as a reply to the comments and the curators can reward the students and teachers on their link submission and feedback comments.
This will keep the feed clean of template posts.
Drawback?
Reduction in new posts since most of the content shared on Steem is related to contests. But I think it's better to prioritize diversity and quality than having monotonous content being published here. Students and teachers can still be rewarded all the same.
That's all I could think of. I'm not 100% sure of the viability of this idea. It's just a suggestion that I openly want to discuss here. Your input might stem better solutions.
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