Running a Weekend-Long Introductory Course – EA Estonia’s Retrospective

TL;DR

We piloted a weekend-long EA introductory crash course as a potential future alternative to our standard 7-week semiannual format. The course exceeded our expectations on engagement and early-stage conversions, but was resource-intensive to set up. It's too early to draw lasting conclusions on the actual impact of the course.
We hope to run another one next autumn to gather more insights. At this stage, we see the crash course as a supplement to our courses, rather than a replacement for our 7-week introductory course. 

The goal of this post is to help future community builders, who might consider this format. Feel free to contact laura[at]efektiivnealtruism[dot]org for more details.

Context and goals

In autumn 2025, EA Estonia ran two identical introductory crash courses on two consecutive weekends (in Tartu and in Tallinn). The format targeted people interested in EA who were unable to commit to a 7-week course.

The course design drew on crash-course pilots in Finland and Norway (Bergen/UiB), but was adapted to the Estonian public and adjusted thanks to EA Finland’s retrospective and direct feedback from the Finnish organisers. 

Design rationale

• Offer a time-compressed, discussion-heavy alternative to weekly courses
• Enable in-person discussions on EA ideas, not just content delivery or online meetings
• Test whether a short format can still lead to meaningful engagement and follow-up

Course format

• Two full days (10:00–16:00), Saturday–Sunday
• Mix of short lectures, videos, structured discussions, and exercises, guided by facilitators
• No previous knowledge of EA or homework expected
• A team of five facilitators and organisers (current or previous EA Estonia board members). Four facilitators worked per weekend, each presenting 2-3 topics.

The schedule

Day 1

10:10–10:50 – Introductions and discussion guidelines/code of conduct

11:00–12:00 – What is Effective Altruism?

12:10–13:00 – Rationality – how to think more objectively and recognise cognitive biases

13:00–13:40 – Lunch

13:40–14:40 – Cost-effectiveness and expected value – how to evaluate different situations quantitatively

14:50–15:50 – Moral circle – whose life is valuable?

15:50–16:00 – Wrap-up of Day 1
Evening – Option to participate in a normal EA Estonia discussion night/meetup

Day 2

10:00–11:00 – How to compare and prioritise different cause areas and interventions (ITN network)

11:10–12:10 – Near-term problems (neartermism) – global health and development, animal welfare, environmental issues

12:20–13:20 – Long-term problems (longtermism) – x-risks, AI safety, s-risks

13:20–14:00 – Lunch

14:00–15:00 – EA criticism + career planning workshop I

15:10–16:00 – Career planning workshop II + future opportunities and course wrap-up

Key metrics

Participation

• Applicants: 28
• Attended: 16 (57% of applicants; 8 in both cities)
  • A sizable number of last-minute cancellations due to illness and a few no-shows without notice.
  • Completed both days: 14 (88% of attendees; 7 in both cities)
    • 1 got sick; 1 said beforehand that can’t participate on the 2nd day
  • Median age: 27 (range 21–65)
    • A wider age spread than expected
    • Format worked across ages, with the exception of career planning
  • 63% women

Costs

• Total cost per two courses: €378 (snacks, lunch, ads, transport for facilitators)
• Cost per participant: €23.63
• Venues were free
• Facilitator and organiser time was unpaid
• Costs were covered by CEA Group Support Funding Grant

Intended outcomes and result

What worked well

Project management

• Early stage risk-planning helped to avoid potential pitfalls
  • Several challenges we encountered (facilitator workload, promotion timing, and format confusion with the 7-week course) had already been identified during planning, which helped us to be prepared for them.
  • Feedback from EA Finland about their learnings helped us shape our course in a way to avoid some of the issues they faced.
  • Clear division of tasks helped to keep things moving along.
     
• We could synthesise feedback from the first course immediately to improve the second one
  • Improvements made between two weekends (especially to the career planning, incl. printing out worksheets) clearly improved perceived quality. The average rating  for how valuable the participants found all the topics altogether was 3.8/5 for the first course and 4.1/5 for the second one.

Pedagogical approach

• Focus on interactivity
  • Participants valued the most active discussions and thought exercises.
  • We ran various group, half-group and one-on-one discussions.
     
• Taking time at the start to establish the right mindset was rewarding
  • We started off with several exercises to encourage productive disagreements e.g. double crux exercise and practicing reasoning transparency.
  • We kept encouraging people to think open-minded, but critically.
  • People felt comfortable expressing different opinions and feedback showed that attendees enjoyed the atmosphere and the fellow attendees.

Learning environment

• Small groups gave space for better discussions and group feeling
  • With 8 participants per course, discussions were manageable and inclusive.
  • Participants were highly engaged throughout the weekend, while also praising the breaks between topics. 
     
• We put thought into space design to support the discussions
  • The first course allowed us a horseshoe format seating, which was great for people to feel included and act naturally more inclusive (not talking over each other; looking in the eye of the one speaking) as well as being more attentive.
  • The second course we were provided with a traditional classroom, where we couldn’t move the tables into a horseshoe format, however we intentionally blocked out all other rows besides the first two to force people to sit in the front and next to each other (Estonians tend to be shy). While the second room provided some challenges, where some participants initially voiced preference for observing from a distance, they ended up still sitting mostly with the others due to the format where we had group or pair discussions after every few slides.
  • We believe that room setup plays an important role for an intense course and bringing people together into a smaller space can help with improving the flow of discussions.

What could have been done better

Organiser management

• Better preparation for facilitation
  • Altogether we had a capable and motivated team running the course, which was essential to the crash course’s success.
  • A crash course format demands very good facilitation skills from the organisers – there was at times a tendency for some participants to go off-topic, dominate conversations, or talk over others.
  • Some facilitators were more comfortable intervening than others. In the future, this needs to be talked through with the team and practiced before the course.
  • Crash course is also information-heavy and participants ask many demanding and detailed questions. The facilitators need to know the material they are presenting very well to be able to answer them satisfactorily.
     
• Volunteer burnout risk
  • The course was labour-intensive to design and facilitate.
  • This format is not sustainably scalable without facilitator compensation or heavy reuse of materials.
  • One facilitator got sick so our second course was facilitated by 3 people, which significantly increased the workload. It also somewhat decreased the quality of the presentations as covering facilitators were presenting content that they personally had not prepared. Luckily attendees were understanding; there was no significant drop in ratings for those topics between the two courses.

Course content

• Too much content / time pressure
  • Participants reported insufficient time to synthesise the amount of new information.
  • We kept running over time with most topics due to more discussions between participants than we expected.
  • This led to shorter breaks than planned, which didn’t give enough time for the attendees to rest.
     
• Career content needs clearer targeting
  • Career planning was polarising: very valuable for some while confusing or mis-targeted for others (e.g. older generation).
  • A one-size-fits-all career block does not work well in a mixed-age group.

Recruitment and communication

• Facebook ads attracted older participants than we were aiming for
  • While most of the participants came via mailing lists and friend referrals, we had a substantial amount of sign-ups via SoMe ads, especially via Facebook.
  • The average age of participants recruited via Facebook ads was nearly double that of participants recruited through all other channels (51 vs. 26).
  • We will be avoiding Facebook ads in the future for similar courses, with a younger target audience.
     
• Email delivery issues affecting attendance
  • A small number of acceptance emails could have been filtered as spam. In at least one case, this led to an accepted applicant missing the initial notification and making other plans before receiving a follow-up message.
  • At this stage, we are not sure how to avoid this.

Takeaways for future organisers (and ourselves)

Course set-up

• Consider running the course in your native language (as opposed to in English)
  • While less inclusive, we think that running it in Estonian strongly encouraged more discussion from the participants.
  • Translating the materials into Estonian took a considerable amount of time (and led to some interesting translations), but was hopefully a one-time investment. 
     
• The course might benefit from being slightly longer
  • Both of our days lasted 6 hours, which was longer than the other crash courses (e.g. Finland did 5 hours/day).
  • We got feedback that it could have been even an hour longer as we were rushing quite a bit.
  • On the other hand, attendees reported feeling mentally tired by the end of the day, so we do not think the course could realistically have been longer.
  • Longer sessions would also increase the budget for food.
     
• Make career planning optional or part of a follow-up course
  • Or make sure your participants are in a similar place in their lives, where they feel motivated to do career planning.
     
• Invest in facilitator training for discussion management and presenting
  • Use clear discussion structures and establish a code of conduct.
  • Worksheets can meaningfully improve clarity for workshop-type activities.
  • Illness and late drop-outs are a real risk for weekend formats.
  • Have a back-up plan in case one of the organisers gets sick (e.g. extra person on stand-by or each topic has at least two people, who could deliver).

 Marketing

• How you market your group during the course matters a lot
  • One of our main goals was to get participants to join EA Estonia to continue learning. For that we invited them to “join EA Estonia community”, which means joining our Slack and getting a welcoming mentor for the first month.
  • During the first course, we learned that some participants perceived “joining EA Estonia” as a more formal commitment than it actually is, with implied expectations or obligations. In the second course, we clarified what “joining the community” entails in practice. The sign-up rate in the second cohort was twice as high as in the first, though this increase may also be explained by other factors.
     
• If you struggle with signups for (any!) EA introductory course, consider an alternative name for the course
  • We do not market our courses under the name “Effective Altruism,” as the term is still largely unknown in Estonia. Instead, we use phrasing that is more immediately understandable in Estonian. The crash course name therefore translates roughly to “Practical Do-gooder’s Weekend Course” (sounds better in Estonian, I swear).
  • This approach allows us to reach a wider audience while still presenting ourselves clearly as Effective Altruism Estonia, so people already familiar with the term can still find us. We have applied a similar naming strategy for our introductory courses over the past five years.
  • At the same time, we have not tried an opposite approach to compare attendance with. 

Comparison with the 7-week format

• A weekend course is a viable complement, but not a replacement, for multi-week programs
  • Cap attendance at ~12 per cohort, if you want room for all-group discussion.
  • Build in more pauses and synthesis moments than you think you need.
  • Long-term impact is yet to be measured, whether a weekend is enough to inspire participants to engage further with EA ideas.
     
• In future iterations, we plan to introduce more selective admissions.
  • Since the weekend format is not as scalable as the 7-week format, we aim to target participants who are actively seeking to increase their impact, such as those considering changes to their career or study path.
  • Based on this pilot, we are somewhat confident that a more selective approach will still attract a sufficient number of high-engagement participants.

The materials we used (unfortunately in Estonian) are available on request to fellow community builders. 
Feel free to contact regarding materials or other questions regarding the project:  laura[at]efektiivnealtruism[dot]org

Have you run or are planning on running a similar format? I would love to hear your thoughts on it!