HELTA Membership Survey:
Results and Outlook

If you are an active member of HELTA, you will have received an email on 25 May 2020 inviting you to answer a series of questions from the committee. Membership Secretary Extraorinaire Andrew Moore has kindly written up the following summary.

The HELTA committee plans events, controls social media, membership and budgets and runs the association for the members. As teachers and trainers, we know how important feedback is. The committee designed a survey to allow us to get your feedback and to hear what you would like from HELTA in the future. 

The results are now in and here are some things we found out from our feedback.

Response

We had 39 responses from our 127 members, a response rate of around 30%.

50% of our respondents had been members of HELTA for less than 5 years.

70% were freelancers, most of whom taught Business English, although general English and ESP were taught widely too.

 

Here are a few interesting facts that we learned.

1) HELTA Events

Of the 9 events put on by us last year, 49% of respondents attended less than two of them, with 36% attending between 3 and 5 events. 

 

Nearly everybody replying was happy with the quality of the events (84%) and the quantity (83%.)

 

We had a number of suggestions for future events to add to those suggested by the committee. 

2) Topics for Future Events

Other Topics for Future Events Suggested by Members

  • Inclusive Practices in EFL / Multicultural anti-racist activities.
  • The influence of intercultural communications competence on teaching business English skills.
  • Starting off in English teaching, the does and don’ts.
  • “Neurological” background of learning a language / Brain research and learning a language. 
  • Movement in the classroom to enhance concentration and performance. 
  • ESP.

3) COVID-19 Consequences and Online Workshops

During the COVID lockdown, HELTA offered weekly Zoom support meetings and online training sessions, some in conjunction with other ELTAs.

95% of those who replied found what was offered interesting and 61% made use of the online support and training. 

Just over half wanted more online workshops, although this equates to 1 in 5 of the total membership!

4) HELTA AGM

When asked about the AGM, 36.84% wanted to have an online AGM whilst 47.37% wanted to wait until we can all meet face to face. 

Some people suggested trying to combine both, one to use proxy postal votes and there were suggestions to postpone the AGM until later in 2020.

5) Communication

The committee’s communication style, transparency and frequency received high marks. 

 

Our online presence included the new website, which was used by over 70% of respondents. For future plans, 84% of them want a members-only area on the website and 35% a members’ forum.  

There was less use of HELTA’s Facebook and LinkedIn pages than of the website.

 

Conclusions and Outlook

The main takeaways from the survey on the part of the committee are:

1) Events: The committee has often wondered why the attendance of our events is sometimes rather thin. However, the survey has shown us that the membership is satisfied overall with both the quality and the frequency of events and so we will tentatively conclude that when members don’t attend events, it’s due to scheduling conflicts or other reasons beyond our control.

2) Event Topics: We’re excited about the suggestions of topics for future workshops and will try to deliver. If anyone has concrete speakers in mind, please go ahead and suggest them. We will try to get them to speak at HELTA.

3) COVID-19 Support and Online Events: We’re glad that the support we offered in the beginning of the crisis was helpful to some of you. We are already in the middle of planning online events (check the Events Section on the website for updates) but will prioritise face-to-face events and go back to planning these just as soon as we’re able.

4) HELTA AGM: We haven’t finally decided whether to have the AGM soon as a hybrid event (some people in the room, others joining online) or whether to wait a little longer in the hope that a full AGM can be held in person. The HELTA Statutes specify only that an AGM has to be held each calendar year, so that gives us a little time. More on this soon.

5) Communication: We’ve started looking into creating a members-only area and forum on the website. Conversely, we may consider closing our pages on Facebook and LinkedIn as it seems we get little engagement here.

Thank you for the kind feedback about the work of the committee. As you can probably appreciate, a lot of work goes into keeping HELTA running and so the occassional pat on the back is very well-received! 🙂

 

The survey has allowed us to find out what you want and now, we can start to organise the future!

Thank you everybody that completed the survey. Please do get in touch with any more feedback, suggestions, ideas, or help that you want to bring in!

You can contact HELTA on the contact page.