Activity 1 Feedback 

Feedback Information: 

Who: Council on Aging Case Manager

Date: Resources given on March 25, 2022. Feedback received on April 1, 2022

Goal: Promoting social and emotional engagement in older adults

Feedback Narrative

Introduction

For my first activity, I created a YouTube channel along with four different playlists filled with popular music of the preferred genres of the older adults that I am working with. In addition to the playlist, I provided a step-by-step written tutorial on how to access this musc. I was anxiously awaiting feedback to see how accessible the YouTube channel was, and overall it worked very well!

 Every week, the Prairie Council on Aging delivers meals to older adults in the Jacksonville, IL area. Last week, in addition to the meals, the case managers and delivery volunteers provided all the older adults that they saw with the instructions on how to access the YouTube playlists. With the exception of two individuals, all the older adults were able to access the playlist on their own! I provided my phone number at the end of the tutorial handout, and two individuals reached out to me for extra help, and I was about to provide some verbal assistance in accessing the playlists. My site contact, a Council on Aging case manager, told me that all of her clients were thrilled to have access to music on the internet.  

Experience

The experience that I have had working with older adults virtually has been exciting and challenging. It has been exciting to get to know my site contacts and the clients that they serve, and it has also been challenging to do everything remote. My site contacts have been phenomenal at giving me updates and feedback about how everything has been going so far, but it would be nice to get to see how the activity has gone firsthand.  

Assumptions

When choosing videos for the playlist I was not sure what kind of videos to add. Should I do only lyric videos? What about music videos? What about videos that display the album cover and nothing else? For this activity I ended up doing a mix of all three. Based on the feedback that the older adults gave their case managers, most of them actually ended up preferring the music videos/live recordings! I had made the assumption that they would prefer only lyric videos, but that was not the case. Several of the older adults discussed the nostalgia that it gave them to see some of their favorite singers perform again. 

Knowledge and Skills

I have been learning so much about how to promote social and emotional engagement in older adults. The feedback that I have gotten thus far has been invaluable. Social isolation is something that I was not familiar with at all before starting this project. However, through my site contacts and the feedback that I have received from some of the older adults, I am learning about leisure activities that they enjoy and how they prefer to access those activities. I was also nervous about creating the step-by-step tutorial handout. I wanted to make sure that everything I included was helpful and accessible. 

Action

I am certainly going to be taking in everything that I have learned from my first activity. According to the information that I received in my interview, another one of the experiences that the older adults like to have is group exercise classes. My plan for activity 2 is to create movement interventions to some of the older adult’s favorite songs. Based on the feedback I received so far about the accessibility of the youtube page, I am currently planning on creating a “workout” playlist and uploading the videos there.