Avoid the Frequent Mistakes Made By Most Webinar Hosts

Jul 14

Avoid the Frequent Mistakes Made By Most Webinar Hosts

Valary Oleinik maintains her youth through curiosity after three decades in various training capacities. She is currently a Training Specialist at a New York-based law firm with offices worldwide where her responsibilities include the design and facilitation of training in various software applications and professional development skills both on- and off-line.

She maintains an blog at valarywithawhy.tumblr.com, tweets@valarywithawhy and welcomes emails at valaryo AT gmail.com.

What follows is an interview with Valary & Bloomfire, a software site geared for easily sharing knowledge and the discussions that surround it.

Q. Have you ever instructed a webinar?

Yes. I have conducted a number of webinars over the past few years. Some were along the lines of demos, presentations, meetings and others would be considered training events.

Q. What is the most frequent mistake made by webinar instructors?

Oh, that’s an easy one. They just talk into the ether. It’s like they are in a giant echo chamber and all they hear is their own voice.

Any training, or presenting for that matter, has to put the audience at the center and the speaker has to listen. Too often webinars just become long lectures and after a while it just sounds like the teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoons–wah, wah, wah, wah.

Webinars should be interactive like any classroom training. The instructor is already at a disadvantage since they cannot see the students to know if they are following along or if their facial expressions reflect that they are confused, bored or excited, or even awake.

Obviously there are some types of webinars that are more lecture-based than others but there should always be an eye toward including participation. The type of participation is often dictated by the technology being used.

If it is a small group, everyone may be on open phone lines and there can be discussion. If it’s a larger group, perhaps a chat window or polling tools are available. In these instances it’s nice to have a second person helping the trainer. The second person act as a producer and monitor the chat and such so the trainer can stop at certain spots and field a few common questions of react to comments by students.

Even if the technology doesn’t allow for much active participation, the trainer can strive to keep things lively through their visuals. When presenting material via webinar it is generally necessary to use more slides than normal.

Attention will more easily drift away from the content in a webinar environment than a classroom environment because of multitasking and environmental things pulling at the participant’s attention.

Changing things on the webinar screen more frequently can snap their attention back. People notice changes and will refocus to see what’s going on and perhaps what they missed.

One final thing I notice attending webinars is that the trainers/presenters often seem less adaptable. In a classroom there are always adjustments going on but in webinars, there is often more “sticking to the script” and less flexibility.

The students haven’t changed but teaching via webinar is a new skill and some have not learned to navigate it as well as others. Without the students right in front of them, some trainers seem a little lost in the void.

Q. What advice would you give to other webinar instructors?

The first thing is to not try to make it that different from a classroom session. The purpose of training doesn’t change just because the medium of transmitting the information changes. The class is still about the students. What do they need? What are the learning objectives?

This applies to the activities in the class as well. How do you like it when an instructor stands in front of a class and just talks at you? Well that’s what many webinar experiences are like. The lecturer just talking and talking into the ether, completely ignoring the students. Just because you can’t see your audience doesn’t mean you can disregard them.

So use the technology platform to its fullest. If it, and the type of session, and size of the group permit it, get people talking, whether it’s through a chat feature, breakout rooms, conference call, etc. Use the polling or other survey type features available. Get to know the tools available to you in the online environment. Just as different room set ups require a trainer to adjust and use different techniques, so does the online world.

And practice, practice, practice. Don’t try to wing it. Don’t have the attitude of “oh, it’s just a webinar.” No it’s people’s time. And they deserve the same level of training as if they were sitting right in front of you. You can even pretend they are.

Stand up while you are presenting your webinar. Gesture. No they can’t see those things, but they will be able to hear it. Your voice will project differently if you are standing or sitting down. And your energy level will be better.

Know your content, not just your script. It’s easy when you’re behind the microphone to feel like you have to stick to the script, but students are still going to have questions and you need to be flexible. And you need to be engaging. If everything is able to be printed on a script, then just send the students a document to read. You need to be there because you bring more than just the script.

If it is going to be a very large group, consider getting someone to act as your producer so they can field technical issues on the side while you focus on the content. They can also help to monitor the chat feeds and such so that you don’t have to try to follow that while you are presenting your planned material.

Be sure to keep things active. You will generally use more slides when presenting material virtually. Make sure you provide breathing spots for you and the students, when they can process the information and ask questions.

Seek out feedback to ensure the students are with you. Again, you need to do the same things you would do in a classroom, set out the objectives, provide activities and content and evaluate their understanding of the content.

This interview is complements of Bloomfire, a software site geared for easily sharing knowledge and the discussions that surround it. You can invite members to find and follow experts, ask questions or share with others by uploading documents, videos or presentations, recording a video on your webcam or creating a screen cast on the fly. Schedule a free demo today.