We hope you have all enjoyed Season 19 of the Steemit Engagement Challenge.

Season 20 of the Challenge will be starting in early September.

Applications are now invited for the new season.

Season 19 saw the introduction of the Teaching Teams. For Season 20 there will be further experimentation and further changes.

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Major Changes

The Engagement Challenge has now been running for 19 seasons - well over a hundred weeks.

We have been aware of a growing feeling amongst the Steem Community that it is time for a change with the Engagement Challenge.

The Teaching Teams in Season 19 were a first step in changing the format.

While participation in the Teaching Team courses has not been as high as we hoped, we are going to give them another chance in Season 20 - assuming appropriate teachers come forward.

There have been comments that people have not wanted to take part in the Teaching Team courses as they require more time and effort than the standard challenges.

That has been taken on board in our voting strategy. We have been giving higher and more frequent votes to Teaching Team posts than standard challenges. This approach may be developed further in Season 20.

We do believe that the Teaching Team model can bring more value to the platform both in terms of utility and content.

The Crypto Academy will continue under the umbrella of the Teaching Teams.

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Finding the best way for the Engagement Challenge to move forward is going to take some experimentation.

We have read in various comments, discussions and debates that one thing that the community would most like to see is a reduction in the number of rules and guidelines.

Therefore for Season 20 we are adopting a more freeform and freestyle approach.

We are also going to move the Engagement Challenge out of the communities - that has become too restrictive and exhausted.

Instead we are looking to recruit individual Challengers.

These will be people who have good ideas for more engaging weekly Challenges that will encourage discussion and debate.

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Teaching Teams

Teaching Teams will be continued in Season 20 with some small changes.

Teams can just be one person - or they can include one assistant to help with marking assignment posts if they want.

Each Team will cover a particular subject area that they have specialist knowledge of such as photography or crochet or baking or spreadsheets or gardening or painting.

During Season 20 they will be expected to deliver a lesson in their subject area each week with a corresponding homework task. The six weekly lessons should ideally form a cohesive course in their subject area.

The Team will then review and grade participants’ homework posts. We would ask Teams to be more thorough and robust in their marking of assignment posts. They should have a wide enough spread of marks out of 10 and give detailed commentary on how posts can be improved. Good marking comments will be rewarded appropriately.

Homework posts from students following each course do not need to be posted in a particular community and can instead be tracked through the use of appropriate tags.

If the course assignments will require any specialist equipment or resources that should be mentioned in the Team’s application post. If these requirements have significant cost implications then higher rewards may be given to compensate.

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How to Apply for Season 20

We are inviting applications from both individual Challengers and from Teaching Teams.

Challengers should make an application post including…

• their experience on Steem, and vital statistics
• details of any real world experience or expertise they want to bring to their Challenges
• a list of six weekly Challenge questions they plan to use to encourage debate and discussion.

They will be allowed to modify their Challenge questions if needed as the Season progresses.

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Teaching Teams should similarly make an application post including…

• the subject area they want to cover
• details of their experience in the subject area be it professional or hobbyist
• three examples of the weekly lessons they would include in their course.

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There are no restrictions on Steem Power, Reputation, nationality, language or community affiliations.

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Posts should also contain the contact details (Telegram/Discord) of all applicants.

Posts should be submitted by 11:59 pm UTC, on Tuesday, August 27th, 2024.

For Challenger applications the posts should include the tag #challenger in the first four tags.

For Teaching Team applications the posts should include the tag #teachingteam in the first four tags.

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Checking & Grading Posts

Teaching Teams should promptly check all assignments.

They should each have a standard comment format that focuses on the quality of the post and how well it has met the requirements of the assignment. It should also include suggestions for improvement.

The comment does not need to include any other information about club status or beneficiaries etc. The only checks needed are for plagiarism and AI content generation.

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Challengers will be free to develop their own commenting format.

They should be on the lookout for plagiarism and AI content generation.

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Selection of Weekly Winners

Each week we would like the Challengers to make a post announcing the 7 best posts and the 7 best comments from all the responses to their weekly challenge.

Likewise the Teaching Teams should make a post announcing the 7 best assignment posts for the week

All the weekly winners, as well as the announcement posts, will receive extra prize votes from @steemcurator01.

The weekly announcement posts are rewarded with substantial votes from @steemcurator01.

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We are looking forward to reading all your applications.

This new format will be very much an experiment and we expect there to be further changes as the Season progresses.

As always we welcome feedback and constructive ideas.

We hope it will bring added interest and more purpose to the Engagement Challenge.

Thank you

The Steemit Team