If you work mainly online like me, you may find yourself running regular synchronous (real-time) tutorials or seminars with your students. Or perhaps you give public webinars to large audiences online. No matter how good your video-conferencing platform, sitting through an hour (or more) of an online presentation requires stamina – from your audience. When things get dull, your participants can easily just nip off and get something from the fridge, or simply go out to the pub. Nobody will even notice them leave.
Reflecting on this, one of the participants on our current E- Moderation skills online course put it beautifully:
… Although it’s great to be sat at home having a lesson, there are also many things to distract you (in my case multiple tabs opened up in my browser, the beer in the fridge, the TV) and the tendency to mentally phase out is greater than in a classroom situation. So, the teacher needs to mix things up a bit to make sure that the attention doesn’t wander too much.
How does the online teacher add variety? How does she ‘mix things up’? How does she keep her audience on the edge of their seats?
I have a few ideas about how. And I’m putting my money where my mouth is by running a free public webinar (under the auspices of the British Council Moscow) on Wednesday 21 September at 13h UK time. The title of the session: Ways with webinars.
So if you’d like to come along and discuss how to run the best webinars, share your experiences, and see a few tips, tricks and techniques in action, simply click here on the day and join us!
Upcoming free webinars:
Here are the free public webinars I’m giving this and next month. Click on the times to see exactly what time it will be in your country/region:
- Ways with Webinars – British Council Moscow, 21 September 13.00h UK time
- Digital Literacies – British Council Madrid, 24 September 12.30h UK time (This will be a live streamed event – link to be announced, so watch The Consultants-E homepage, Twitter, or Facebook for this)
- Teaching Online – IATEFL BESIG, 2 October 15.00h UK time
Read some related blog posts on webinars:
Four ways with webinars
Tips for the online conference speaker
Tips for the online conference moderator
And please feel free to share any webinar tips, advice, or personal webinar /online teaching experiences in Comments below!
Nicky Hockly
The Consultants-E
September 2011