Blog 3: Testing Helpful Hours in front of a live audience
Making sure our Helpful Hour hits the right note in terms of content and effectiveness, our volunteer team has been busy presenting to live and online audiences. Find out how they got on…
Now that we had the structure of our first Helpful Hour established, we had to make sure the information we were sharing about preparing for audiology appointments worked well.
We started our testing phase by presenting to our own volunteer family. Our peer support volunteers all have lived experience of hearing loss and their input to this session was incredibly important.
Their feedback helped to shape our Helpful Hour so that it was clear, concise and presented in a way our audience didn’t feel overwhelmed.
This also set up our volunteers for their first ‘live’ Helpful Hour in front of a packed audience at our Hearing Information day in Yorkshire. Team member Emmanuelle presented to an audience of 29 people.
The feedback was superb, with reactions ranging from “brilliant session” to “I got lots of useful tips for my next audiology appointment”.
This gave all our volunteers so much confidence to move on to the next stage of testing. This time we held special trial events for our charity staff to perfect our presentation styles, test our speech-to-text technology and get ready for next in-person event – the Hearing Information Day at our charity home in Saunderton, Bucks.
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Another chance to present to a live audience
At this event our volunteers Sylvia and Julia were presenting two sessions during the sell-out event. Across both sessions 44 people learned how to get their most from their audiology appointment. There were a few technical bumps along the way, but our volunteers were pleased with the enthusiastic response.
These trial events have given our Helpful Hours a chance to grow their confidence in presenting to a live audience, as well as increasing their skills around technology. We are extremely proud of how they have developed this new, free, service.
Going live
We are now getting very excited that our next public, online event, will taking place this Friday.
Don’t miss the chance to attend our first webinar ‘How to get the most from your audiology appointment’.
Book your FREE place at hearinglink.org/helpfulhours
Next time: Getting ready for launch