Issue 12
Tip 2: Five Interactive Ideas for PowerPoint
An interactive PowerPoint is a memorable PowerPoint. It makes the audience sit up and take notice, without letting them slip into idle relaxation. A relaxed audience is a forgetful audience. You want an audience that’s awake, alert, and excited to learn.
Below are five interactive PowerPoint ideas you can use in your next presentation.
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1. Icebreakers prime the audience for engagement
Opening your presentation with a friendly icebreaker introduces interactivity in a low-stakes environment. Traditionally, icebreaker questions are used to help people get to know each other. But you can also use them to get people thinking about the topic of your presentation.
More reading in Issue 5 Tip 2: How to Choose an Icebreaker.
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2. Let the audience control the flow of your presentation
A surefire idea for an interactive PowerPoint is letting the audience dictate its flow. Solicit feedback on what they find most interesting – or understand the least – about what you’re presenting and use that information to decide what you cover next.
You can do this be asking the audience directly, which is what I’ve done in the example here. Or you can indirectly gauge their understanding using trivia questions. If they perform poorly on a question, you may need to revisit that portion of your presentation.
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3. Incorporate audience feedback into your presentation
Drawing upon practical examples from your audience not only makes your material more relatable, it also creates a two-way dialogue between speaker and audience.
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4. Use quizzes to build anticipation
Quizzing the audience before or after a key point in your presentation is an excellent way to transform ideas into lasting memories. You could start with the example shown here asking about Caesar’s assassination. But don’t reveal the correct answer right away. Instead, leave the audience hanging and continue on with your presentation.
When you arrive at the specific topic your question is addressing – that’s when you reveal the correct answer. Keeping the audience on the hook this way builds anticipation for the big reveal, and keep everyone invested in what you’re presenting.
More reading in Issue 5 Tip 1: Engaging Individual Students in Big Classes.
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5. Create shareable mementoes from your presentation
Create and share a report summarizing the results of your interactive activities with the audience after your presentation. If you used Poll Everywhere, this can be as simple as exporting a screen shot of a completed poll, or generating a detailed report of how each participant respond to your polls.
For presenters, these reports can yield valuable insights into how you can improve the content of your presentation, while also giving the audience a memento of what they learned.
More reading in 8.1 Types of Report.
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(This article is quoted from Poll Everywhere)
