Sustaining interest - any recipe?

Well, it is 2011, a new year... Happy wishes and all the same!

A tradition to make some resolutions, potentially to be broken in a matter of time :-)

I thought blogging is something that I want to try. While what resolution to make was one major hurdle out of the way, the next major hurdle was (and is), how do I keep the resolution alive and kicking?

Recently, I have been in the midst of organizing a full-fledged (equivalent to a full-semester) course at my workplace, conducted by a Professor from IIT. The main issue was how to we sustain the interest of the participants, how do we ensure that the participants indeed complete the course. Ofcourse, the subject, its relevance to work, course contents, follow-up courses, etc. were all brain-stormed with the core team. But the main issue of sustaining interest was not resolved. There were many conjectures -

• Participants will become < 50% by the 3rd lecture
• Any evaluation will discourage participation
• Whatever subject is chosen, it will be relevant to few and not relevant to others - so, others will drop out after a lecture or two
• Professor himself may loose interest in teaching across cities (he had to travel for the teaching)
• Professionals are not used to such a long (semester like) classroom teaching
• Professionals will not want to attend classes at weekends

We had outlined and followed few basic principles -

• Check with potential participants (the R&D) group about their interest in re-learning / re-freshing basic fundamentals and some advanced concepts
• While participation is optional, imbibed the need of its mandatoriness over a period of time
• Attraction to learn and interact with a renowed faculty from IIT, potential continued interaction and collaboration
• Attendance and Evaluation to be rewarded, and emphasized by the supervisors / group leaders
• Pre-awareness among the potential participants of the 50-60 hour total teaching, extra efforts in learning, courses mostly on weekends (for the whole day)
• Some flexibility in the teaching days to ensure maximum participation
• Dessimination of the investment (expenses) made for the course organization among the participants

The point to make is that there are absolutely no drop outs, after more than 50% of the course is done!. Full credit to the faculty for teaching in a manner to make it so "wanting" for the participants. Ofcourse, need to wait till the course is complete...

Whatever said and done, it is not easy to sustain interest. What really made the participants sustain their interest? Was it the stick? Was it the urge to learn? Was it the aura of IIT faculty? Was it the free-lunch? Is their an algorithm that worked? Will the algorithm work elsewhere with other social activities, where the sticks could be different, the motivations would be different?

Will I sustain my interest to blog? Only time will tell...

A first time sada-fatting blogger...
Ravindra Naik