Design for Interaction & Engagement When Presenting Online
By Scott J. Allen & Maria Soriano Young
“It’s the difference between speaker and facilitator. No matter what you are presenting, no matter who the participants are, you can ask questions, leverage chat, and use other facilitation tools to pull the audience in and engage with them.” —Jennifer Cowles, Leader of Leadership and Executive Programs at KeyBank
When presenting online, it’s helpful to include a slide at the beginning that has an agenda or a list of learning objectives (or you could even copy and paste that information into the chat box, if you are not using slides). Likewise, it’s helpful to include a slide that highlights norms (e.g., on/off camera, how to ask questions) for the session, and to briefly talk about those toward the beginning of the session. Doing so will help participants understand how they should engage with you and with the content, and how they can make the most out of the session.
In addition to sharing an agenda and communicating norms, you will want to design for interaction and engagement—meaning you must actively plan for both to happen. Maggie Mills, the 2020 National Champion of the Public Forum Debate in the National Speech and Debate Association, reinforced this point nicely, even in the sphere of high school speech and debate competitions. She suggests that she and her partner are “always just trying to make sure that the judge is engaged and feels like a part of the debate rather than someone on the outside.” We feel the same about presentations, and encourage you to think about sessions that you have attended where you either felt actively engaged and included or passively talked at, and almost ignored. Transfer that experience into your own design phase, and think about what you want your audience members to know, feel, and do during your presentation. With the way you’ve designed your session, do people feel like they are a part of the storyline? Or are they on the outside? If the answer right now is the latter, how could you make some changes? The goal is to facilitate a learning experience that does not feel like it’s dragging on for participants.
“Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening.” —Dorothy Sarnoff, actress
Interactive moments should not simply be inserted “just to be sure everyone is engaged” or at gratuitous moments to make the audience feel involved. Rather, interactive experiences should connect to and enhance the overall purpose and objectives of the presentation. We often consider three variables when choosing an interactive tool: timing, purpose, and modality.
Timing – Remember our tips for “combating the fade”? Interactive moments can be strategically placed throughout the presentation to consistently recapture the attention of the audience.
Purpose – Does the interaction underscore a point or aid in the learning process? Will it allow you to gain some information about the audience? Or does it simply represent a “Hey, are you paying attention to me?” moment? We mention the importance of pedagogical purpose here because we have been involved in too many sessions where a gratuitous poll did little to add value. For example, Maria once attended a session that featured “test your knowledge” poll questions inserted within the Google Slides. Her observation was that this tactic “made us feel like we were in school and the teacher just wanted to be sure we were listening.”
Modality – We work to incorporate various types of interactive interventions to avoid predictable patterns and learner fatigue—three slides and a poll, three slides and a poll, three slides, and a poll.
While some presenters may feel constrained by the online environment, there are a number of options available. The point here is that your objectives should determine the best type of interaction to select, especially online.
Stay tuned…next week, we will explore the many options you have to encourage interaction and facilitate engagement.
We explore this topic and others in our new book Captovation: Online Presentations by Design.