Designing

We now have our skeleton for a presentation which takes the form of a project plan. In this next module, we will take you through the steps for fleshing out all of the details and intricacies of the presentation, from the logistics and technical set up, to the design of the learning resources, to building a registration system and marketing materials.

But first, in that the devil is in the details, let’s go over the rough structure of the webinar in terms of participants, timing and format.

Number of Participants

When it comes to figuring out how many participants to allow in a particular session, there’s no magic number. A rule of thumb to keep in mind, though, is the fact that the more users that you have, the harder it will be to attend to each of their personalized needs. In a research study conducted to measure the attitudes of students and trainers using the webinar tool Blackboard Collaborate, the instructors cited the fact that they felt it would be a challenge to lead a webinar session with more than 10 people if the activities were complicated. ^[1] Additionally, they felt that a good use of the limited amount of time available in the webinar lent itself to the presentation of procedural or conceptual information, with any hands–on work included as a takeaway activity.

In his book “The Tipping Point,” Malcolm Gladwell discusses the phenomena of the ability to control social dynamics by limiting the number of individuals present in a particular environment. He emphasizes the “benefit of unity, of having everyone in a complex enterprise share a common relationship.” ^[2] If your group is too large, you will have difficulty attending to individual learner needs and keeping participants equally invested in the learning process. ^[3] Conversely, in granularly selecting the number of participants, you have the ability to personalize the lesson and tend to each learner’s needs. In doing so, you value the importance of individual learning within the communal environment, thereby fostering a sense of collaboration and shared success.

What if you’re not the one that gets to decide how many people will attend your webinar? Use the following guidelines listed below to begin engaging in activities that match the number of learners that will be present at your session.

• Have groups of 5 or fewer complete collaborative activities together or separately in breakout rooms
• Groups of 5 to 10 can participate in open dialogue discussions about a topic or concept
• 10 to 20 participants can engage in live demonstrations with a heavy question and answer component
• Webinars of 20 or more participants can take part in fast-paced presentations and lectures with frequent polling

The above suggestions are not hard rules to follow, but simply suggestions. Feel free to insert appropriate engagement activities based on the learner needs, technical skill level, and content presented in the lesson. Your audience assessment from the first module will help you make the final decision on which format would be most appropriate for your webinar.

Producers and Facilitators

We discussed the participants, but what about the individuals necessary to help facilitate and produce a successful webinar? If you are the content matter expert who plans to lead the main presentation in the webinar, you may consider assigning a person the role of the technical producer or facilitator for the session. Webinar facilitators serve the task of troubleshooting technical issues that can hamper instructional flow, engage with participants to facilitate question-and-answer, and help with the myriad of issues that may pop up during the course of a live session. ^[4] Your facilitator could be an instructional designer or colleague who is good with technology. They might also be a secondary presenter, with you and the facilitator switching roles mid-session. When one person is presenting, the other person attends to the needs of the participants so as to not cause the presenter to have to stop mid lesson.

Some presenters also solicit the help of their colleagues to assist as participants within the session. Then when a question is asked and learners need a prompt or incentive to answer, these participants help to get the ball rolling. Often times, the questions that they will contribute will help to activate learners prior knowledge or realign the questions to individual learner needs or goals. They can also help to interject a level of humanity into the presentation, giving anecdotal evidence or examples of theories in practice from their own professional careers.

Below, you will find a short list of facilitator/producer competencies for webinars:

• Knowledgeable of the system that you’ve chosen for the webinar
• Experience facilitating or producing a session in the system chosen for the webinar
• Familiar with the material to be presented and can anticipate jumps in the navigation or presentation order
• Familiar with the technical skill level and learning needs of the participants
• Skilled at troubleshooting common technical issues within the system
• Able to devise and implement a backup plan in the case of technology failure

Session Format

In terms of the physical location of your audience, you can present to them from one location with multiple users together in a second location, you can present to individual users in multiple locations, or you can also have small clusters of users all presenting from multiple locations. Typically, webinars take the format of the second description, with one presenter connecting to individual participants each in front of their own computer.

As for the delivery format, any kind of face-to-face interaction that might occur in a classroom or in an online course can easily be translated into a webinar format. While the majority of webinars include a presentation as the core component of the session, peruse through the following chart of teaching activities for inspiration on how you might structure the core instructional component of your lesson. ^[5] And remember that even if the activity of choice is not necessarily aligned to the size of your group, you can always use breakout rooms to give individuals specialized activities.

Think about the ways in which you will engage with your audience and solicit feedback.  Will they be submitting questions and comments via a chat window?  Will they have access to microphones?  Will they use webcams so that everyone can see each other?  Each of these decisions carries implications in terms of time and technical support – a room of 10 people chatting with microphones is a lot easier to maintain that 50 people.

Timing and Scheduling

No matter how ambitious your plans might be in terms of the content that you would like to present during your webinar, keep in mind that in setting the time for the session, you make a promise to your participants that you should absolutely stick to. Divide the content that you would like to present into meaningful chunks and leave space for group activities in between each chunk of the lecture, giving students the opportunity to actively engage with the material. ^[6]

Typically, most webinars last for about an hour and cover lecture contents, collaborative activities, question-and-answer, and a takeaway activity. If you decide to hold a session longer than an hour, plan to give participants the chance to step away from the computer and break for 10 to 15 minutes after every hour and a half of instruction. If you decide to hold a compressed 30 minute session, make sure to maximize the time allotted to present the content. You won’t have the traditional amount of time left for typical webinar components such as introductions and icebreakers, so if those are included make sure that they are abbreviated.

While an hour seems like a very short amount of time to fit in all of the necessary components for an engaging webinar, in actuality, you’ll want to make sure that your content is a launching pad for your students to participate in an activity or community held outside of the webinar timeframe. Utilize that power to engage your learners and whet their appetite, so that they leave the webinar compelled to seek more information and build upon the lessons learned.

Below you will find a sample timetable for an hour-long webinar along with recommended suggestions for the amount of time that it takes to complete each component.  You’ll notice that in this example, the pace is brisk.  However, the learners are actively engaging with the material and providing feedback at a regular pace throughout the lesson.

You’ll also want to take a little time to figure out when you’d like to hold your webinar. While afternoon and evening sessions are popular for most working professionals, you really need to defer to your target audience. When are they free and most open to the presentation of new material? If you don’t know, consider sampling a small group of individuals with similar roles as your target audience. You can create an informal poll or a mini-survey (such as a Doodle) to figure out when you’ll garner the most participation. And don’t let the date and time be a sticking point – if your content is exciting and you advertise well in advance, people will make time to come.