Engaginars - 9 Easy Ways to Increase Engagement in Webinars

OK, I'll admit that I try to multi-task while participating in a webinar. I'm betting that somewhere between 95% and 99% of us do. With heavy workloads and no one watching over our shoulder, it's easy to try to get some extra work done while sitting through another dry webinar. 

But once I started designing and providing webinars, my perspective changed. As I wrote about in my book "Caffeinated Learning: How to Design and Conduct Rich, Robust Professional Training" - wouldn't it be great if we didn't need caffeine to keep us awake and engaged? What if it was built into the  instructional design in the first place?

The same thing holds true for webinars. If we think of them instead as "engaginars," then we should add engagement elements to the original design. By having a variety of ways to keep participants engaged, we are more likely to reduce multi-tasking and increase the learning.

​Here are nine easy ways you can add some engagement to your next webinar.

1. Caption This: Show an intriguing photo on your slide and ask everyone to chat in a caption.
2. Analogy: Provide the first half of an analogy and ask everyone to chat in the second half. For example, "Listening is to sales as ________ is to ___________.
3. Choose One: Post two images side by side and ask everyone to choose between the two - Which one is more like_______? Which one is a non-example of ________? Which one would you want to see in your workplace? 
4. Wheel of Fortune: Create a slide with a partially completed phrase. Ask everyone to chat in missing letters or to guess the completed phrase.   _o  e__y  _nd  _un  (So easy and fun!)
5. Continuum: Create a continuum on your slide and ask everyone to chat in a number that represents where they are on the continuum. For example a "Control Continuum" might have a 1 representing "Gumby" and a 10 representing "Need a Valium."
6. Number Puzzle: Show a slide with a number on it and ask everyone to guess what it has to do with your content. For example, 9 seconds. (A student drops out of school every 9 seconds.)
7. Observation: Post a detailed photo related to your content and ask participants "What do you notice about this photo?" This usually works best if there are problems to find in the photo. 
8. Quadrants: Draw a 4 quadrant table on a slide and mark each with a characteristic related to your topic. Ask participants to chat about which quadrant they find most challenging. For example, if your topic is team development, you might have Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing. 
9. Draw and Send: Ask participants to draw a quick image related to your content, take a photo with their phone and email it to you. Wait a moment and then open your emails to show a few examples. 

What other ideas have you seen or used to keep engagement high? Share with us so that we can all become masters of "engaginars."

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