The 12-Fold Way of Wonderful Webinars: Part 2
Welcome back! In last week's instalment, we began our journey along the 12-Fold Way of Wonderful Webinars. Now let's continue with part 2.
7) Get Off to A Good Start
Include a slide that has a picture of the presenters, facilitators and moderators, along with their contact information. This will give them an image to keep in mind when listening to your voice.
For smaller groups (< 10), start with a quick go-round or roll call to introduce the participants to each other. Be sure to set clear guidelines for how (and thus how long) participants should introduce themselves. For example, “Please share your name, and where you’re calling from” and then model it yourself “My name is Dwayne, and I’m calling from the TNS Canada office here in Ottawa”. NB: for larger groups (> 10), spoken introductions may not be practical, but you may be able to circulate a participants’ lists by email.
Refer to your guests as “participants” to set the tone that they are there to actively be involved in the learning, not to veg out.
Provide a simple outline of the webinar at the beginning of the presentation that shows the topical program of learning tasks. Refer to this outline repeatedly during the session so that people know “where they are”. Consider using a graphic (e.g. a “you are here” arrow) that marks where you are in the program and inserting that slide throughout.
8) Sound Advice: Get the Audio Right
Encourage everyone to use a headset on the call to avoid feedback and to prevent their microphones capturing ambient noise (e.g. keyboard clatter, ambient noises, Farmville chickens clucking).
Ask people to switch their microphones or phone lines to mute when not speaking. In some cases you can do this for them in the webinar program.
Vary you tone of voice and annunciate a bit more than you might usually in a face-to-face situation. As Stephen Boyd writes:
”Your voice is everything with the webinar. Show enthusiasm in your voice from the very beginning. Punch out key words, pause for effect, create variety in vocal quality, speed up, slow down, and don’t speak too rapidly.” (Source: Stephen Boyd)
Be careful not to use “pause words” like “um”, “like”, “you know”. When people can’t see you in person, these phrases become even more noticeable and potentially annoying. Similarly, watch if you have any unusual vocal inflections (e.g. mumbling, speaking too quickly, raising your voice like everything is a question,) on a webinar. Listening to a recording of yourself can be quite instructive (and frightening).
Do not read the slides verbatim; people tend to read faster than you can speak, and they will wonder why they are there if all you’re doing is reading the slides. Having said that, it is alright to read a definition verbatim if you set it up properly. Similarly, if you are setting a learning task, keep your verbal instructions close to any text on the screen so as not to confuse the participants.
9) Share the Airspace: Giving Voice to Learners
It can be challenging to work against the inertia of the webinar technology and not fall into just making one-way presentations. But as in face-to-face learning events, the more that you can build in opportunities for genuine interaction and dialogue, the deeper the learning can be.
As mentioned above, build these opportunities into the learning design by creating space for large group discussions, small group work (if possible) and framing each mini-presentation with an open question that invites the learners to listen and watch more deeply.
Be sure to leave enough time for questions throughout the webinar, rather than cramming in a few token questions in at the end.
Some webinar platforms like GoToWebinar allow you to see whether or not a participant has your webinar presentation as their primary screen. If you see a lot of participants who are not paying attention, break up the planned program with a spontaneous question to create more opportunities for deeper engagement).
Consider also using parallel communication channel to solicit feedback and input: set up a Twitter feed for them to send their comments.
10) Kinesthetic: Build in Movement
As more and more webinar platforms start producing apps for smartphones, the potential for mobile webinar learning is growing. So consider inviting the learners to
- stretch at the half-time point to get the blood flowing again -- maybe a little yoga to get the energy back up.
- take a walk while listening and watching the webinar on their phones
- go out and find an object that symbolizes their involvement with the topic and to share that with the group (perhaps via a photo on their smartphone).
Any opportunity to get their "bums out of their seats" will probably be appreciated.
11) End Well
Design your webinar to use less than 100% of the time you have in case something goes wrong or takes longer than expected. But always finish on time so that people can leave gracefully. (Levine)
At the end of the webinar, invite the learners to name what they will apply to their work situationafter the seminar. For example, “Use the chat line and name one thing that you’ve seen or heard today that you’ll apply to your work soon”. This encourages them to synthesize what they've seen and heard with their "real world" context.
Design any feedback questionnaire to be proportionate to the length of the session and the depth of engagement (i.e. don’t send a questionnaire with 10 questions for a 1-hour webinar). You can either send a short online survey as part of your follow-up materials, or better yet, conduct a very short anonymous poll re: the webinar at the end of the session before they sign off
If some participants want to stay on the line to chat, great, but consider calling them back (to save money and to keep their conversation private). You can also help them connect with each other if they want to continue a conversation offline later.
12) Follow-Up Afterwards
The webinar doesn't end when the last person hangs up. Consider what you can do afterwards to support their learning, including:
Follow-up with supplemental material (via an individual or group email) immediately after the webinar (or at least by the next day) before the participants get re-involved with email, meetings and weekends. Send them some additional resources via email to respond to any emergent learning needs.
Assign a follow-up assignment via an asynchronous platform. Invite them to participate in a follow-up forum discussion after the webinar via an online platform.
Post a recording of the audio and visuals of the webinar online for them to review later.
Remind them of the next webinar that you're providing.
Final Thoughts
Someday when the rest of my hair is gray we’ll meet on our 5-Dimensional holodecks and laugh about the bad old days when we felt limited by our 21st Century horse-and-buggy webinar technology.
But until then, keep experimenting with ways to make webinars dynamic and interactive to support learning through dialogue; and please let me know what you’ve found that works for you in the comment section below.
Cheers, dh
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Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 9:33PM | 4 Comments Share Article Email Article Print Article
Reader Comments (4)
Thanks for this helpful list and tips for interactive webinars. I'm about to start doing some and really need to put thought into their design, so your timing is perfect. For video and document use, I've used Webex.com, which allows up to six visual locations at a time and also allows the facilitator to put documents on the screen for everyone to see. I'll have to check to see if it can allow small group work. Thanks much, keep the good content coming.
Martha Levensaler
League of Conservation Voters
Glad to hear this was helpful! I have used Webex before with mixed results.
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Cheers! Dwayne
Hi DH, thanks for this post . . . I remembered reading it when it you published it, and now that I am designing a webinar I came back to it for helpful inspiration. Relevancy!
Just wondering if you have come across good examples of webinars that I could peruse online? I've never actually participated in a webinar before, so designing one becomes a little more daunting. Please share if you have anything.
Hope you're well.
Matt
Matt:
Hmm...not sure where you'd find webinars online that you can go and watch. Maybe at www.slideshare.net? Provided that they have the voice overs. But that won't give you much sense of how webinars are done with a live audience.
dh