Hi,

I was waiting for this debate as I also saw that the number of participants in the Steemit engagement challenge reduced, especially in teaching teams.

Are the Teaching Teams a good development for the Engagement Challenge?

I think that was a good initiative, but the topic selections weren't good & and not all users knew about it. Most users don't even know about CSS, spreadsheets or electronics. I can't participate in teaching teams tasks because I don't have much knowledge as I belonged to medical field. As a doctor we don't study about spreadsheets, CSS or electronics. So, I must say idea was good but topic selection weren't according to users choice.

Should there be further changes as well as the Teaching Teams?

Maybe Steemit Team also made some changes as we have seen less participation of users in teaching team tasks.

Would writing themes like the Better Life themes be a good way to bring more freedom and variety to the Engagement Challenge?

I would support this idea as there are variety of topics for users to share their participation. Even this will also increase users engagement & maximum users share posts according to their topic of interest. Because there are some common topic that are related to our daily life & in which we are expert.

If so how should they be managed and administered?

I think if a better life with steem initiative would be like users can share their content in any community but there should be a specific tags to find their posts, they don't have to follow any community rules because these topics can be shared on their blogs. This was my opinion. I hope we should see more positive changes in the coming days.