Lesson 1: Overview of Effective Webinar Training

5. Approach for Effective Webinar Training Development

5.2. Effective Use of Interactive Webinar Tools

When there is no interaction between the presenter and the webinar audience, there is no sense of connection. Participants might as well be watching a recording. A sense of connection or ‘social presence’ is important for maintaining the attention of your audience.

Social presence is a concept used to describe the sense of closeness in an online environment. It indicates how much a person feels they are 'real.' A strong sense of social presence facilitates meaningful and effective learning.

Interactive webinar tools such as voice audio, chat, application sharing, and polling enable interaction similar to a face-to-face setting. These can be used to enable a student-centered teaching approach by engaging participants in the instruction. They also serve to cultivate a sense of social presence.

Interaction is also important for the speaker. Without it, they can feel isolated when talking to a computer screen rather than an audience. This lack of feedback from the audience may negatively affect how well the information is presented.

Additional benefits of using interactive tools include:

Improves audience retention – interested viewers are less likely to multi-task or leave your webinar.
Enables determination of viewer understanding, or if you are moving too slow or too fast.
Provides for push-pull information exchange so that not only the presenter’s knowledge is shared but also that of the participants.

Later, you will learn how to use good teaching practices to select which interactive tools to use. While these tools may be beneficial to learning, they can be detrimental if not appropriately applied.