Top Ten Tips for Effective Interactive Meetings with Audience Response Technology
Organizations have long used lectures as the typical means of teaching, with the assumption that they are an effective way of imparting great amounts of knowledge to large groups of students. Recent research, however, questions the effectiveness of traditional lecture formats on participant understanding and knowledge retention. When the audience takes a purely passive role, their attention falls off after 20 to 30 minutes with most people incapable of recalling more than three facts from an hour long lecture.
Using audience response system technology improves lectures by encouraging more efficient acquisition and retention of knowledge through active learning.
Here are some tips to make your interactive audience response sessions run smoother:
Tip 1: Keep questions short to improve legibility
Keep your question and answer options short and simple in order that the audience can read them easily and respond quickly.
Tip 2: Have five (or less) options for answer choices
If more than five options are {provided~displayed~given, the font-size gets too small, the words become too cluttered – the screen becomes hard to read. Also, when results are shown, they become cluttered and hard to interpret.
Tip 3: Ask simple questions
Do not make your questions too complex. If you give your audience too much information and think they’ll be able to read it, understand it and make a quick decision, either the response rate will decrease because of the difficulty of the task, or the presentation will slow down considerably to allow time to provide meaningful answers to the questions. Neither of these situations is ideal – the purpose of using group response systems is to create a non-threatening atmosphere which encourages the participation of all audience members, and for the session to be active and fun.
Tip 4: Allocate time for discussion
Once the presentation is underway the audience quickly gets involved and much discussion is stimulated as their responses to the questions are displayed. When preparing your presentation, therefore, you must build in time for such discussion.
Tip 5: Don’t ask too many questions
Use questions sparsely to highlight the points you most want participants to retain. Vary your presentation with other slides. Giving your audience with a series of one question after another becomes unbearable and their enthusiasm will diminish.
Tip 6: Inspect your meeting location ahead of time in order to identify any potential technical problems
There are some technical issues to keep in mind regarding venue. For example, certain types of lighting can interfere with the signals of infra-red (IR) handsets and receivers. Radio-frequency (RF) units may have trouble if the range between base stations and keypads is too far, or if separate interactive polling sessions are held simultaneously in adjoining rooms. It is thus advisable to try out the system in the proposed venue in order that any such problems can be identified and fixed before the presentation begins.
Tip 7: Set up and test the system before the session begins
It takes some time to connect the various hardware and lay out the handsets – depending on the size of venue and audience. Allow plenty of time to set up the system and ensure all the components are working before your audience arrives, and factor in some extra time to resolve any problems that may unexpectedly arise during the setup process.
Tip 8: Practice your presentation to ensure that it will run smoothly
group response systems are simple to use but require initial practice to familiarize yourself with them and to co-ordinate the timing for a smooth-running presentation. Practice your presentation several times, especially the first few times that you use the audience response system technology, until you are confident with it.
Tip 9: Provide clear directions to your audience
Brief your audience on what is expected of them. Unless they register their response at the correct time, their response will not be recorded. Clear directions should be given before the session begins in order that the maximum number of valid responses to each question is collected.
Tip 10: Encourage participatory discussion
One of the most beneficial features of interactive polling sessions!presentations is the enthusiastic discussion that ensues from the audience polling format. The anonymous nature of the responses provides an informal, non-threatening environment, which encourages free-flowing debate between the audience and presenter.
Adhering to the above tips will help you achieve the benefits of group response systems, which can turn large group polling meetings into a truly interactive – and fun – experience for both you and your audience.
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