In the current challenging economic climate, organizations are increasingly requiring that employees and partners spend wisely and justify expenditures. One area in which organizations need to be sure their investments provide real value are group activities such as company meetings, training sessions, focus groups, sales meetings, entertainment events, and industry conferences.
Audience response system technologies can improve the effectiveness, and therefore the value, of meetings and other events by engaging audience members in interactive activities such as:
Pre/post knowledge assessments--Using your audience response system to ask pre-assessment quiz questions at the beginning of your session will give you important insight into identifying knowledge levels of attendees and their interest in your planned topics. Depending on the results, you can spend more or less time on each concept which will create more memorable, powerful experiences that engage your audience. In addition, asking the audience why they answered as they did will help boost attentiveness and retention. Asking questions a second time after instruction will reinforce correct answers and provide a measurement of learning.
Team building exercises--You can use your response system to promote interaction among your participants. This will help foster new relationships and cooperation. For example, you can ask demographic questions that identify important sub-groups in your audience. Then, on subsequent opinion questions, show tabulations identifying how the sub-groups are thinking alike or thinking differently. Facilitate discussions to surface misperceptions and issues that need resolution and then have participants break into groups and brainstorm solutions. This helps build stronger relationships, alignment, and shared commitment.
Gamification--Gamification is the use of game playing elements to draw attendees more deeply into your presentation. Competition naturally encourages participation and engagement with your subject material. By thinking creatively, you can incorporate a web or PowerPoint based learning game into your presentation in ways that will be both stimulating and effective.
Surveys--Use your audience response system to poll the audience on a series of audience survey questions. A live audience polling system gives you a host of opportunities to tap the wisdom of the people in the room such as learning what audience members think about each topic! This will allow you to identify how often members of the audience are experiencing problems or issues related to your subject matter. You can then use your response system to foster discussions and benchmark best practice solutions from real world experience. Your attendees will engage with one another and your material more effectively.
Case Studies--Incorporate real-life case study questions to stimulate critical thinking. This will help ignite the creativity of your attendees by giving audience members the option to vote for the best proposed solution to the case. You can then put the results on screen and ask participants to defend their selections. This can be beneficial when conducting “peer instruction” where the audience is divided into teams of three or four people to discuss and solve case study questions.
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