Planning

Dr. Allison Rossett wrote in her book Beyond the Podium: Delivering Training and Performance to a Digital World, “Outcome-oriented, [great training] is authentic and active.  Afterwards, you know you’ve been involved with something compelling, vivid and memorable – something you can take back to your work and life.” ^[1] Substitute great training for great lectures, great demonstrations, or even great webinars and you can see that there are commonalities between all presentation formats. Furthermore, these commonalities help to illuminate a strategy for engagement in the planning of any sort of presentation, which in this case, happens to be a webinar.

Engage Us, Don’t Enrage Us

In formulating a plan for success, we have to define the common failures of poor presentations so as to avoid those pitfalls.  We also need to model our design strategies after the benchmark for good presentations. This list is by no means exhaustive, but covers some of the most commonly shared complaints of both eMeetings and face-to-face presentations alike.

WHAT WE NEED	WHAT ENRAGES US	WHAT ENGAGES US
Agenda: Tell us where we are going and how we'll get there	Poor/no objectives offered	Clear objectives and learning goals stated up front.
Planning: Show us that you put some thought into this	Disorganization and a lack of a game plan.	High level of organization, evident pre-planning, and an agenda right at the beginning.
Engagement: Don't make us feel like were all alone	Rote lecturing with no opportunities for dialogue	Meaningful points of engagement that allow participants to build a sense of community
Assessment: Know what I already know and what I need	Content not aligned to user needs or skill levels	Pre-assessments that allow presenters to specialize content offerings
Timing: Tell me how long it will take and then keep to that promise	Presentation runs over or offers no indication of where we're at in the lesson	Focused material presented at a good pace that leaves ample time for questions
Takeaway: Give me something to take away from the session	No plan for engagement or call to action post-session	Useful takeaway items, downloadable resources, and a place to continue the discussion afterwards

Excellence = Access

If we look at the overall themes from the chart above, we see accessibility is the core characteristic of success within the medium of synchronous online learning. Successful webinars gain traction because they are open – participants can drop in, learn a specialized topic or skill in about an hour, and then leave. In that time participants will be able to engage in meaningful dialogue with their peers in a relaxed and open environment. Skilled presenters foster the development of new ideas, welcome divergent opinions, and inject humor and anecdotal evidence as applicable. They also acknowledge the fact that learning should extend well beyond the timeframe of the webinar itself, and build communities of practice for their participants to engage in after the session ends.

Webinars have the ability to share content that serves as the tip of the iceberg, and then leaves students with a takeaway activity that promotes critical thinking and development of new ideas. ^[2] A successful webinar puts learners first, acknowledges that presentation and preparation are key, is well thought out and well articulated, and acknowledges the unique learning challenges and needs of the participants. In her article, “What Stinks About Most Webinars,” Dr. Allison Rossett cites personalization and engagement as essential, encouraging presenters to utilize “activities that compel attention rather than demand it.” ^[3] Ultimately, success cannot be claimed without assessment. A good presenter takes the time to reflect on the quality of instruction and uses feedback in order to improve teaching and the meeting of learning outcomes.