Rethinking the *dreaded* Unidirectional Webinar

I recently had the opportunity to engage in extended professional learning around the design of more interactive webinars and wow— did I walk away with a whole new perspective. The training was part of the presenter preparation for the 4T Digital Writing Virtual Conference co-hosted by the University of Michigan and the National Writing Project. While I often serve the “techie” function of moderating webinars for the online courses I teach and facilitate, I’ve never actually designed and presented my own webinar, which may also be one of the reasons why I wasn’t as able to support engaging webinar design. So this was definitely a chance to feel the pressure and perspective from the other side!

Throughout the training, I was struck by the simple yet powerful suggestions that the team presented. Unfortunately, some of these were based on platform features that didn’t necessarily translate to my working context, as our training took place in Blackboard Collaborate while our courses currently use Go To Meeting. The ease of engaging participants on the whiteboard with text, raising their hands, and using polling features were all simple ways to keep them participating throughout. Though I was unable to incorporate these feature-based additions into my future work, there were some more transferable practices I am already putting to use!

• Designing a Lobby Activity: I have found the 15 minutes before a webinar starts to be important to settling tech-nerves for participants and speakers alike. However, we are often left awkwardly sitting around until the time officially begins. Designing a lobby activity as the opening slide provides an opportunity to get participants talking in the chat box, engaging with materials, or reflecting in some form that can carry over into the opening.
• Incorporating Outside Resources: While we have always provided outside resources throughout our webinars, these are usually meant to be referenced at a later date. Alternatively, asking participants to briefly review a resource (reading or video), post questions or feedback to a Google Doc, or engage in another active way during the session helps to move beyond the “lecture” feel of webinars that so many of our presenters dread.
• Taking Time for Application: Transfer to practice is always a major goal of our work, however, we typically just assume it as a natural follow-up to our time together. Instead, it can be more productive to intentionally build in application activities into the structure of the webinar itself. Google Docs or Padlet can provide easy ways for participants to express ideas. During a webinar last week, we set aside time for participants to free write around some prompts and were able to engage with Google Doc commenting even as our participants were still typing. Of course this is not groundbreaking—we do this in the classroom all of the time. However, utilizing this type of activity during a webinar was somehow novel to me in a really meaningful way.​​

I’m so grateful for the opportunity to engage in this training and am excited for the impact it will have on our future webinar planning. I can also say that it already had a powerful impact on my own webinar experience, which went better than I ever could have expected!
I’ve also decided to pilot a platform switch to Blackboard Collaborate during the upcoming semester. Just to capture all of my current thinking, I created the following resource as part of the new preparation materials I will share with presenters to help them design more interactive webinars.