interactive presentation

interactive presentation

The Power of Interactive Presentations

1. Introduction

In general, a presentation is a speech or talk in which a new product or idea, or piece of work is shown and explained to an audience. It’s recognized in several forms such as a sales presentation, marketing presentation, a lecture, conference, etc. The best forms of presentation are using slides (overhead or computer) or whiteboard, flip chart or props, and product samples or demonstration. This kind of presentation attracts the audience to visualize what had been explained to them. But at the same time, a bad presentation can put the audience into a confounding state. They might end up not understanding the message being delivered to them. This can be caused by a poor preparation from the presenter.

Interactive presentation nowadays is no longer as it used to be and static in nature. Sometimes it arises in our mind why are we putting much effort to prepare a good and informative presentation? The answer is we are trying to attract the audience; we want to catch their attention to understand our material and what you would like to convey to them. Using interactive multimedia presentation is one of the ways to enhance your presentation slide. If you are able to prepare an attractive multimedia presentation to be presented; surely it will be an advantage done to the audience to get the message. He or she will understand in brief the material given during this presentation.

2. Benefits of Interactive Presentations

Related to the idea of increased engagement is the capability for interactivity to foster personalised learning. This is often cited as a unique strength of e-learning and is equally relevant to interactive presentations. Depending on the form of interactivity, it is possible for learners to receive individualised feedback, branching automatically to different content in response to learner input, thereby directing focus to aspects the learner has not yet mastered, or providing remedial material in response to incorrect answers. Learner control and pacing is also potentially scalable depending on the amount of interactive elements and whether these are user-led or designed into the presentation.

Personalisation

Interactive presentations can help increase audience engagement. This is an oft-cited benefit of many technology-based teaching and learning techniques, and there is some evidence to suggest that it can also be a feature of interactive presentations. When used in lecture sessions, for example, audience response systems have been demonstrated to maintain attention and increase participation. In other learning contexts, engaging with interactive multimedia can promote active learning, aiding understanding and knowledge retention.

Increased audience engagement

3. Key Features and Tools for Interactive Presentations

Interactive presentations have numerous key features that affect the impact of the message that is trying to be communicated. These key features include animation, multimedia, hyperlinks, and sound. The use of these features allows for the presentation to be engaging and memorable. Animation can be used to add emphasis to a point, create an effective transition between slides, and be used for comedy relief. The movement on the screen will draw the audience in and keep them interested wherever the animation is being used. Multimedia such as video, music, and online content can be used to educate and entertain an audience. Video and sound can also be used to make a point clear with the use of emotional music or pathos with an actor’s tone. If an online connection is present during the time of the presentation, content from the web can be used to provide live and up-to-date information presented in the presentation. Hyperlinks can be used to connect the audience to more content or resources on the internet which is very useful for presentations in areas requiring extra information or teaching. A hyperlink can also be used to guide the flow of the presentation based on an audience reaction to a given slide. Sound has a similar function to animation in the fact that it can be used to add emphasis to points, create effective transitions, and keep the audience interested where the sound is being used. But sound has a much larger impact than animation and is useful in capturing one’s attention that has wandered off during the presentation.

4. Tips for Creating Engaging Interactive Presentations

Coherence. In considering the broader relevance of technologies to teaching, we should consider a key distinction between education at large, educational policy, and educational institutions. It is easy to confuse the aims of the latter with the former, particularly given the application of education technologies to the administrative functions of educational institutions and an emphasis on efficiency, communication with stakeholders, and improving data about student learning. Education (at the level of the educator or the learner) is a broad umbrella term, and in the realm of what technologies might offer, there are a wide variety of goals educators and learners might have. Official educational institutions place different levels of priority on particular educational goals, and it is often the case that educational policy conflicts with the aims of education itself. Young has pointed out that there can often be a lack of coordination between public education policy and the work of those who are actually educating and that the former can be influenced by powerful interest groups or political factors, sometimes having detrimental effects on the quality or character of education provided. This lack of coordination can mean that technologies or technology-focused initiatives adopted at the institutional level are not congruent with the purposes of educational practice or the needs of learners. A critical attitude and careful exploration of the purposes of technologies then is relevant to educational practice of all kinds and may involve educators positioning themselves against institutional objectives or making proposals for change.

Persuasive tone. If you want to create highly engaging interactive presentations, there are several things you should keep in mind. Firstly, remember who your audience is and what they might like to see. If you know your audience, you are providing something that they like. Interactive presentations have the added benefit of gathering user feedback in real time, so use interactive polls and surveys to gather information from your audience on what they like, and tailor your content to suit their needs. Another way to create engaging interactive content is to create a branched scenario. This means creating a case study and then asking the user what they would do in the same situation, then providing different feedback depending on the choice they make. This engages the user, gets them thinking and is often more memorable than static content. This kind of content can be created using a variety of tools. Adobe Captivate is a high-end tool perfect for creating branched scenarios, and there are a range of PowerPoint add-ins or open source tools which can help create interactive content people. Always have the user in mind when creating interactive content and make their experience as rich and varied as possible.

5. Conclusion

This is not to say that the traditional methods of presentation are no longer useful. The same techniques used to make an effective interactive presentation can also be applied to enhance a linear presentation. The ability to contextually link information, to require the user to decide what information is pertinent and to see the results of that decision, and to represent complex ideas or systems visually are all powerful techniques which can be applied to non-interactive presentations. The design process for an interactive presentation, while requiring more strategic thought in how information is to be presented, may prove to result in a highly polished linear presentation. This concept is not without its criticisms, the primary being that such a presentation could alienate users who are used to passively receiving information. This is a legitimate concern and should always be a decider in choosing what presentation medium is to be used.

It is with merit to conclude that the true power in an interactive presentation, as distinguished from a traditional, linear presentation, lies in its ability to engage users with information. This is crucially important in a society which is becoming ever more fragmented, saturating us with information. It is not enough to simply throw information at a user and hope it sticks. This is a gamble which is unlikely to pay off. A well-designed interactive presentation guides the user in finding information, letting them make their own conclusions and often feel as though they have discovered the information themselves. This is the key to long-term memory and understanding, which are our real goals in educational and most communicative presentations.