5 Interaction & Engagement Techniques for Virtual Presentations
By Scott J. Allen & Maria Soriano Young
Last week we explored the need to design for interaction and engagement. This post moves beyond the gratuitous poll or the over-used breakout room and highlights a few other design considerations to keep your audience engaged and tuned in. While not a complete list, it may spark an idea or thought as you design the delivery of your next virtual learning experience.
Activity/Puzzle
An activity or puzzle is an engaging way to introduce a topic or reinforce a point. An “activity” may take up 2 minutes or 2 hours, depending on presenter objectives. An example of a quick activity is as follows: Scott will often discuss conceptual blocks, which are “mental barriers that impede an individual’s ability to define or solve a problem.” After providing the definition, he will often share the following puzzle, asking the participants to identify the answer:
“A young boy and his father were out playing football when they were caught at the bottom of a giant pileup. Both were injured and rushed to the hospital. They were wheeled into separate operating rooms and two doctors prepped up to work on them, one doctor for each patient. The doctor operating on the father got started right away, but the doctor assigned to the young boy stared at him in surprise. ‘I can’t operate on him!’ the doctor exclaimed to the staff. ‘That child is my son!’”
Scott then asks participants to digitally raise their hands when they have the answer(s). The story reinforces the concept. In this instance, many people have subconscious rules in their heads that surgeons are “men,” whereas in the puzzle above, the key is that the doctor who cannot operate on the boy is the boy’s mother. (Did you get that right?)
Admittedly, conducting activities in an online environment is an interesting challenge, and we would love to hear your thoughts and ideas about what has worked, or what has flopped. Engagigng activities catch a listener’s attention and set a tone of curiosity and wonder.
If participants have a common set of supplies, perhaps the presenter tasks them with a universal challenge that requires them to build, draw, or create something.
There are several online resources, such as www.mural.co, that allow for visual collaboration. Resources such as Mural allow users to actively participate in ways similar to face-to-face meetings.
Task participants with securing a “special object” that represents their passion for the topic being discussed, their family, a hobby, or a concept.
Perform a quick demonstration or some other physical manifestation of your opening point. For instance, Scott has used the Changing Perspective Activity to discuss the importance of perspective. He has also used the Point North Activity to highlight the challenge of getting everyone on the same page
A Thought-Provoking Question
A well-designed, well-placed, and thoughtful question can be an excellent engagement intervention. In our experience, there are a couple of important considerations if you are planning to open with a question. First, does the question have a little “heat” to it? In other words, is it provocative, and will it spark engagement? Second, is the question open-ended, and can it be explored from multiple perspectives? Third, you may need to be fairly directive with participants - “Janet, what do you think?” or “Let’s hear from Peter and Lily to kick things off.” Here are a few examples of questions that might open your session by getting your audience thinking:
Where have we fallen short in recent months?
How does the team move to the next level? What’s holding us back?
Given our current resourcing, how do we still win in the marketplace?
How is our current mindset holding us back - individually and collectively?
Shared Google Doc
A nice complement to a breakout room is a shared document where participants have an opportunity to perform a group task, record their group’s answers to guided questions, or brainstorm their solutions to a problem. A shared document keeps participants on track, makes their time in breakout rooms active, and can serve as a nice takeaway for participants and the presenter. If this is the method you’re going to use, have the Google Doc ready and open in a new window, and then copy and paste the link into the chat box so participants can seamlessly transition to the new task.
Cartoons/Artwork
Scott has a colleague—Ed O’Malley, CEO of the Kansas Leadership Center—who quite effectively uses cartoons as an interactive activity. The cartoon highlighted below is drawn by Pat Byrne and is used when Ed and his team talk about the leadership concept of “Acting Experimentally.” Cartoons are similar to memes in that they communicate a point of view in a quick, often visually appealing manner. As the presenter, you could share a cartoon and then use the chat, a poll, or a breakout to debrief the content. The presenter could also call on a participant to share their viewpoint.
Real-Time Tweeting or Social Media Posts
Some participants enjoy live-tweeting or posting to social media in real time. For some, the process keeps them engaged and active in their learning. Likewise, this technique can help learners synthesize, summarize, and highlight content that resonates with them. If you are willing to offer that option, be sure to ask the host or organization in advance about social media protocol; they may expect that your presentation remains within the company. If they do permit or encourage social media interaction, address that at the beginning of the session, perhaps creating a hashtag for the session and sharing your social media username.
These quick ideas are only the beginning. There are hundreds of activities that can facilitate interaction and engagement among participants. You just need a growth mindset and an open eye, and you will begin to see possibilities everywhere!
We explore this topic and others in our new book Captovation: Online Presentations by Design.