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Pre-Assessment Exercise

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The pre-assessment exercise below, a series of questions on the characteristics of webinars, will help you to activate prior knowledge of past sessions that you’ve attended, both good and bad. You can then use that knowledge to guide the design of webinars that you create in the future.

So you’ve got your presentation in mind that you’d like to plan, but you want to make sure that it doesn’t bore your participants to death? We’re going to walk you through the steps to successful engagement, but before we begin, let’s complete a pre-assessment exercise.

Before you work through the questions below, think back to presentations that you’ve attended or led. Try to remember sessions that you found to be successful, and those that you felt were lacking.  Then, carefully read each true or false question.  When you have an answer in mind, click on the drop-down menu to learn the answer and see specifically how it relates to education and design theory and research. You’ll also see links to the future modules that explain the answer in greater detail, along with resources available online that elaborate on the design and education principles that support each fact.

True or False: A quick participant pre-survey can help me to tailor my content to the target audience.

True. Focusing your presentation on the unique learner goals present amongst your participants will help to hone in on communication styles and materials that will keep them invested in the experience.

Learn more in the section on Defining Your Audience.

True or False: If my audience isn't paying attention to the content, it could be because of the way that I am presenting the information.

True. Many factors can be attributed to capturing learner attention, and the presentation style (from the materials to the actual presenter’s diction and presence) has bearing on how the content is received. In Paola Domizio’s article Giving a good lecture, she explains that leaving the work up to students to glean the key points from content is a poor strategy. Rather, good teaching involves sharing knowledge in a way that makes it readily accessible for learners. [1]

Learn more in the section on Presenting.

True or False: eMeeting software is often expensive and difficult to learn.

False. Just like Baskin Robbins, eMeeting solutions come in many flavors, and a good number of them are free to low cost. Additionally, although there is a learning curve associated with all new applications, most eMeeting software is straightforward to implement and built to allow participants to get started with little to no prior knowledge of how the system works.

Learn more in the section on Choosing a System for Online Presentations.

True or False: Registration systems are simple to set up and allow presenters to collect important information about their participants.

True. Gone are the days where a programmer and designer are necessary to set up a web form. With free solutions such as Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, Weebly and Formidable (for WordPress), users of all technical skill levels can build an online registration form with a few clicks of the mouse.

Learn more in the section on Designing Registration and Marketing Materials.

True or False: The design of the presentation doesn't matter as long as the content is important.

False. Displaying content in a manner that requires them to divide their attention unsuccessfully between multiple channels in the webinar (called the split attention effect [2]) can cause cognitive overload. Less is more when you are giving a presentation, particularly if you want your participants to focus on the main takeaways in your session.

In addition, you may have heard the term “Death by PowerPoint” before – Yale statistician Edward Tufte cites that many presentations using PowerPoint lead to gross oversimplifications of information and the death of analytical thinking. [3] While this is certainly true for many poorly-designed presentations, the common core of this argument is the fact that ineffective applications of layout design in any medium will hinder cognition.

Learn more in the section on Presentation Design.

True or False: Piloting your webinar and planning multiple test runs can help to alleviate many of the technical issues.

True. Murphy’s law dictates that, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong,” and technology certainly isn’t an exception. However, you can spare yourself from a great majority of the technical foibles that occur during webinars by checking your equipment, setup and design. And checking it frequently. Then, once you have everything in place, don’t muck around with it. That way, you’ll be stacking the deck in your favor and should hopefully be able to just show up and present rather than troubleshoot.

Learn more about this in the section on Creating and Testing the Meeting Space.

True or False: Participants need to be able to speak on camera in order to be engaged in the webinar.

False. Engagement comes in many forms, and most eMeeting software now offers rich opportunities for exchange in real-time without the use of audio or video. Live chat, polling, interactive whiteboards and screen shares all offer points of contact without the use of a single mic or camera.

Learn more about this in the section on Engagement Activities.

True or False: Techniques from face-to-face meetings can easily be integrated into online presentations.

True. When trainers and developers include activities in face-to-face meetings, they do so to build connections between participants and a sense of community amongst learners. Using icebreakers, introductions, brainstorming exercises and small breakout group activities traditionally included in in-person meetings will help learners to invest in your session and feel less like they are passively taking in the presentation.

Learn more about this in the section on Engagement Activities.

True or False: Once the meeting agenda is planned and set, you should never switch gears in the middle of the presentation.

False. Good teachers understand the importance of assessment in the midst of teaching, and are able to gauge learner attention and knowledge transfer. If your plan is A, but your particular set of learners needs B (and B still meets the learning objectives set forth by the lesson), don’t be afraid to switch gears accordingly to support learning.

Learn more about this in the section on Assessing Knowledge Transfer.

True or False: Creating pre- and post-assessment activities allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of the instruction.

True. Knowing what your learners bring to the table prior to your session and then measuring how much they have learned afterwards is exceedingly useful in assigning value and necessity to the instruction, and also planning for future sessions. Feedback is free and will only help you to fine-tune and improve, so don’t skip the opportunity to ask for it.

Learn more about this in the section on Creating Pre- and Post-Assessments.

Checking In

How did that go? Did you find that your answers were in line with the explanations? Moreover, did the answers serve as explanations of why past webinars that you have attended or run were successes (or failures)? Keep these answers in mind as you progress through the lessons, thinking about practical applications of each principle or theory presented. To begin, we’re going to discuss the importance of figuring out who your audience is and what they want in creating a project plan.

UP NEXT: PLANNING THE LESSON
Before you can construct your webinar, you’ll need to build your road map. This module will teach you how to define learning objectives that will guide the design of your session.

References and Further Reading    (↑ returns to text)

  1. Domizio, P. (2008). Giving a good lecture. Diagnostic histopathology, 14(6), 284-288. Retrieved from http://www.diagnostichistopathology.co.uk/article/S1756-2317(08)00068-6/abstract↑
  2. Kalyuga, S., Chandler, P., & Sweller, J. (2004). When redundant on-screen text in multimedia technical instruction can interfere with learning. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 46(3), 567-581. Retrieved from http://hfs.sagepub.com/content/46/3/567.full.pdf html↑
  3. Tufte, E. (2006). The cognitive style of powerpoint: Pitching out corrupts within. (2nd ed.). Cheshire: Graphics Press.↑