Have you got the occasional hour to spare to volunteer with Benefits and Work? We are currently recruiting people to help us try out training methods and materials.
There are three sorts of training we are looking for people to help out with. You don’t need any specialist benefits knowledge or equipment for them. And it doesn’t matter what speed your broadband is, we’d like to get a wide range of users.
You can volunteer for all types or just for one. And you don’t have to commit to a certain number of hours or specific times, we’ll just let you know when there’s something we need testing
Some of the courses are being developed with the aim of helping to fund the site, some will be free to members or to everybody.
And others are part of our plan to create detailed training for volunteer moderators for the Benefits and Work forum, to relieve the burden for current moderators.
On-demand training
You’ll be watching short videos or slide presentations about, for example, PIP claims and then answering multiple choice or other questions, in the same way someone taking the course would.
Afterwards, you’ll fill out a brief feedback form or post in a discussion forum to let us know what worked well and what needs improvement.
At this stage you won’t be taking part in a full course. Instead it will be fragments as we develop them. But you will get the chance to do the full courses as we complete them, if you wish
Zoom training
You’ll be taking part in short Zoom training courses, so that we can try out material and test out the technology. You’ll have to be willing to appear on screen along with other participants, but it absolutely won’t be a test of your benefits knowledge – rather it’s a test of our training material and techniques.
Again, you won’t be taking part in a full Zoom training session, just parts of them as they are developed.
We can’t promise that you will get to do the whole Zoom course when one gets completed, but we’ll do our best to let you if you wish.
Webinars
We’ve already run several webinars on the site and we’re planning to do more in the Autumn. But it’s always good to have a run through with a small audience first to make sure everything is clear and that there aren’t any hitches with polls or downloads.
Usually, we’ll be looking for volunteers to attend the webinar and give us their feedback.
Next step
If you’d like to take part, there’s a brief survey form to complete.
We do want to stress again that we’re not looking for benefits expertise and we want people with a wide range of devices and operating systems to try out the training. So it doesn’t matter what sort of equipment you use or how fast your internet connection is, you’ll be very welcome.
