Five Great Tools for Online Presentations
Global Bridge
Global Bridge is an English language and communication training provider based in Tokyo. Now providing online training.
Have you ever given an online presentation and not been able to see your audience? If so, you’ll know that it can be difficult to present without any visual feedback to tell you that your audience is listening and understands what you’re saying. And you may have good reason for worrying, because if you’ve attended an online presentation, you’ll know how hard it is to stay focused and not have your attention drift to your inbox or that report you need to finish.
Most presenters know that they need to use a hook to get their audience’s attention at the start of their presentation – an anecdote, a surprising fact, or a funny video, for example. But, according to some experts, that’s not enough. In his fascinating book?Brain Rules, John Medina explains that “you’ve got seconds to grab someone’s attention and only ten minutes to keep it.” While the amount of time that people can pay attention differs from person to person and situation to situation, for most people, it’s hard for anyone to listen and concentrate for more than about ten minutes. As Medina puts it, “the brain needs a break” from paying attention to something for so long. That’s why most people’s minds start to wander or they get distracted by something else – which is particularly easy to do when they are watching online and the presenter can’t see them.
So, how can you keep your audience’s attention when their focus may be starting to drift? According to psychologist Andrew Watson, the best solution is to “stop lecturing and do something else”. Medina agrees and recommends breaking your presentation into short ten-minute sections and using a new hook to recapture the audience’s attention at the start of each section. Of course, thinking of multiple hooks can be a challenge. However, I want to share some useful tools that you can use to get your audience to interact with you. This interaction provides them with a break from listening by giving them “something else” to do, and allows you to create a hook to get your audience’s attention all over again. It’s also a great way to get some reassurance that your audience is listening and engaged with your presentation.
Answer Garden
Use this website to elicit words or phrases from your audience. It’s a great way to break the ice at the start of a presentation and establish that participation will be required. For example, depending on the topic of your presentation, you may want to ask the audience to tell you what languages they can speak, what countries they are based in, or even what they had for lunch. You just need to share a link with the participants. They can type their answers without needing to register their details. The answers form a word cloud that everyone can see. The more popular the answer, the bigger the word.
Kahoot
This website lets you create fun quizzes or polls that you can use as part of your presentation. Users can join in by entering a URL on their computer or phone and then typing in a PIN number. There is one screen per question, and participants will see the question, an image and the answer choices. After all participants have answered, the results screen shows you how many people chose each answer – and which participants got the highest score. (Note that although it’s free to make a simple multiple-choice quiz, paid membership is required for other template types.)
Padlet
This site can be used to have people brainstorm and share ideas. You set up a board and then share a link and password with participants. They can then add notes to the board to contribute. It’s also possible to like other people’s ideas (see the heart on the white note) or leave comments (see the yellow note). The site updates as people add ideas so everyone can read each other’s answers and collaborate. (Note that although basic use of this site is free, advanced features require paid membership.)
Slido
This service incorporates the features described above into one website – you can ask your audience to contribute word clouds, answer quiz questions, and brainstorm together. You can also set up a live Q&A alongside your presentation – perhaps for your colleague to manage while you present. (There is a basic free version, but you need to pay a monthly fee to use all the features or to host very large audiences.)
mmhmm
Ever been disappointed that your audience can’t see you and your slides at the same time? This app solves that problem. Upload your slides into mmhmm and you can appear alongside or in front of your slides in Zoom, Teams and other web conferencing applications. Although this app doesn’t provide the same kinds of interactivity as the other four tools, it does allow for greater visual variety in the presentation that you give –?and it’s much more engaging to be able to see the presenter than just being able to see their slides. (Note that this app requires a monthly fee.)
References
Medina, J. (2014)?Brain Rules. Pear Press.
Watson, A. C. (2017)?Learning Begins. Rowman & Littlefield.
If you would like to learn more about?Global Bridge, please contact?[email protected]?or call 03-3518-2620.?