Crank Up Your Online Presentations

Here's how to use sight and sound to engage learners at a distance.

Live, online learning presents new challenges to instructors and course designers. If you don't keep participants engaged, you can't transmit your message. But how do you do this in an online environment, often without eye contact and body gestures? The answer lies in rethinking the way you design the visual interface and in becoming a broadcast "personality." Here are three ways to crank your e-training up a notch.

Break the rules. Traditional slideshow presentations use templates--often created by marketing departments. Marketing has reasons for using consistent colors, bullets, and so forth, but that doesn't always work in live, online training.

In this new environment, you often rely on voice and graphics, eliminating cues like hand gestures and body language. The 480 x 640-pixel screen provided by software platforms is the only visual interaction available. Because of this, you need to find ways to compensate for that small space. How? By making the screen change, using a combination of graphics and photos, changing fonts and colors, and using a combination of media types. Every time the screen changes, you have an opportunity to reengage learners. When the screen changes and they see a different look, the mind signals "Watch out--something important might be coming."

You want your online presentations to look professional, so stay within a general theme of colors and fonts, and make sure all elements of the screen design support the message you're trying to convey.

Create interesting graphics. I read that upper-level managers view more than 120 PowerPoint presentations a year--and they usually see the same templates over and over.

According to the Ten Commandments of Presentations published by the Harvard Management Communication Letter, "An enormous number of businesspeople watch an even greater number of slides day in and day out because speakers have half-learned a dubious wisdom that there are visual learners out there and that a large number of slides will help them learn." The article goes on to say, "Yes, those visual learners like pictures. They also like good metaphors, videos, broad overviews, and enthusiastic gestures. What they don't like is one slide after another paced with words."

When you remove the eye contact between instructor and learner, an abundance of bulleted slides becomes even less effective. Counteract that by using images to create a presentation theme. For instance, when you introduce a concept for the first time, create an icon to represent that idea.

When you must use bullet points, take advantage of the opportunity to make them engaging. For example, you can use a question mark as a bullet when you ask questions, and use an exclamation mark bullet to make strong points. Use road signs, automobiles, anything to keep your learners peering at the screen and not out the window.

Use your voice. Live, online facilitation is much like two-way radio broadcasting. The next time you're watching a great speaker, take a moment to close your eyes and listen. Is he or she as effective when you remove the physical cues? Often, the answer is no. It's usually the physical presence that's engaging, not the voice.

To keep participants engaged--no matter what's on the screen--you need to broadcast your messages effectively. This means

Vary your intonations. Whenever you change pitch or volume, participants will listen more closely to what you have to say.
Use humor. If you sound engaged and like you're having a good time, chances are your participants will want to hear your message.
Smile. When you smile, the happiness is transmitted in your voice, and that can be contagious.
Keep your energy up. If you're not enthusiastic, learners might tune out.
Use hand gestures. Though the participants cannot see you, using natural gestures will improve your intonation and delivery. Instructors may not want to use a headset that physically restricts them to the computer space; that can stifle presentations. Using a studio microphone and computer speakers is an effective alternative.

Try these design and delivery techniques; you and your online participants may be pleasantly surprised at the training results.

Jennifer Hofmann is principal of InSync Training Synergy (www.insynctraining.com), which provides consulting services to organizations interested in adopting synchronous WBT. She can be reached at jennifer@insynctraining.com.