Easily adding interactivity to online sessions
Written by Judy Rees
It’s much harder to hold people’s attention in an online environment than when they are in the room with you: that’s just the way it is. The key to keeping people engaged is interactivity: lots of it.
Back in the day, before video calls were really a thing, great trainers used to aim to get a response from group members every two minutes in order to be sure people were staying focussed. Nowadays, with plenty of cameras on, you can stretch that to seven or even ten minutes.
Unless you’re world-leading public speaker with astonishing online presentation skills, don’t talk over slides for 45 minutes on a webinar and expect people to stay tuned in. It just isn’t going to happen.
The trouble is, that boring, familiar “webinar” format often feels like the only option when you’re an inexperienced event organiser with limited facilitation skills.
What can you do instead?
My preferred option is to go for stripy sessions.
Option 1: Break any talk into shorter chunks of less than ten minutes, and in between the chunks insert small, short breakouts – groups of about three people, five minutes. Spin the wheel to choose a discussion question, if you’re stuck.
Option 2: If you can’t, or don’t want to, use breakouts, then go old-school and ask everyone to share their opinion, all at once. You might use the Poll function (or a tool like Mentimeter or Slido) to ask a quiz question or sample the group’s opinion. Or get everyone to answer a discussion question in the chat.
Feeling innovative? I love to invite the group to show, with a movement or gesture, how they are feeling about the topic. Or to unmute, all at once, and shout out an answer to a simple question. Or to draw something on a sticky note and show it to the camera.
If you don’t need to deliver any chalk-and-talk content, you can make your sessions even more interactive, relying on the group to provide its own wisdom. Liberating Structures are the way to go here: either 1-2-4-all or Conversation Cafe are very easy to facilitate online as long as you have access to breakout rooms and your group isn’t too enormous.
What not to do
I don’t advise simply inviting questions from anyone in the group as a way of breaking up the session, because unless you’re very lucky, you’ll just hear from the same people. If you do use this tactic, set a strict time limit (no more than five minutes) and maybe even display a timer.
When you use small, short breakout rooms, don’t do death by debrief. Debriefing is not a requirement. The point of the breakouts is the conversations in the breakouts.
Be very wary of panel discussions, unless you are an experienced moderator with a full grasp of the subject under discussion. They can be super tough to handle, especially with a panel made up of senior experts with strong opinions! If your participants have field experiences that others would want to hear, try a Fishbowl instead.
