Your Guide to Reaching Your Audience
After all of the effort you've put into writing a proposal and design a presentation, you'll want to be sure to deliver your best. Presenting at an EDUCAUSE event is an opportunity for both growth and recognition. Use these resources to optimize your event experience.
Reminders at the Podium
- Introduce yourself.
- Speak up and be heard.
- Repeat questions for others.
- Keep the topic hot.
- Keep it conversational.
- Keep the time.
- Continue the conversation.
Read more about each of these seven podium tips.
Technology Tools
1. Participant Polling
Use polls to query the audience about their thoughts, demograhics, or understanding of your topic. Adjust your content accordingly. Ask their opinions on key issues, where they stand in their own adoption cycles of new tools or their concerns related to new tools or processes. Use tools such as Poll Everywhere to allow audience responses by text, Twitter, or the web.
2. Question and Answer Tools
Allow attendees to pose questions throughout your presentation to maintain engagement. Take time mid-stream to answer time-sensitive questions; pose your own questions to the audience at the end. Tools like Live Question Tool and Google Moderator encourage audience participation in question submission and response.
3. Backchannel Communication
Generate buzz between attendees; encourage audience members to share links, respond to questions, or add their own commentary through the backchannel. Publicize a hashtag for your session for Twitter. Seed the conversation by using Twtpoll to ask attendees questions or mining the Twitter stream for questions or key ideas. Use Backchan.nl to generate questions and audience participation.
4. Participant Collaboration
Use online documents, such as Google Docs, to gather discussion questions up front. Encourage participants to share their knowledge. Seed discussion questions yourself, if necessary; reference the document in your presentation.
Especially for Online Delivery
1. Audio Tips
As a remote presenter, you must consider the impact of your surroundings on participants' ability to hear you clearly. Deliver your session in a private and quiet space; background noises are distracting. If calling in via a conference call line, use a landline to ensure clearest audio quality. Use a headset with microphone, never a speaker phone.
2. Adobe Connect Polling
Monitor and improve audience engagement by using polls within Adobe Connect. Query participants about demographics, thoughts, opinions.. At the start of your presentation, test their knowledge of your topic and make adjustments up front. Check their understanding as your presentation progresses to make ongoing adjustments. In Adobe Connect, polling results appear in real time. Use this opportunity to provide commentary or use participants' comments to enhance your narrative.
3. Backchannel Communication
Our virtual learning environment includes a chat window for attendees to interact with one another. Encourage participants to share links, resources, and their own expertise in the chat space. From time to time, respond to comments by name to demonstrate that you are actively following their dialogue.