Ask HN: Tips on Creating Study Groups?

3 pointsTotoHorner2y ago2 comments

I would like to create an online study group of anonymous strangers on the internet who are interested in learning about the recent developments in AI.

The issue with these kinds of study groups is that a lot of people sign up and everyone ends up quitting 2 weeks in.

Has anyone been able to successfully sustain an online study group (on discord/slack/whatever)?

If so, how have you done it and what tips do you have?

Thank you

2 comments

Eridrus2y ago

I have been part of exactly one successful non-school study group: going through the Sutton & Barto RL book.

I was highly motivated to get into ML at the time and also unemployed. Since being gainfully employed doing ML, my motivation to consistently find time for study groups of all sorts is much lower.

I liked the study group because I found the material somewhat challenging and appreciated having some folks who I could talk to about it.

The study group had ~6 people in it iirc and was offline. I did the exercises, but almost nobody else did.

Which is to say, I think study groups are hard to sustain because dedicated sustained effort is hard to sustain overall.

KuriousCat2y ago

May be you need to start with some high level overview:

- What is the purpose of this group?

- Why do you think it is a great use of anonymous strangers time?

- Why do you think the anonymous stranger would be craving to come back and attend it consistently?

- What is the anonymous stranger expected to bring to the group?

- What is the anonymous stranger expected go get from the group?

- What are the needs of this anonymous stranger that are unmet through his self study, online forums such as r/machinelearning, ML conferences, unlimited ML videos, going through hugging face paper digest, company research blogs etc.?

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