Seven Easy Steps to Engage Your Audience During a Presentation
How to make sure your audience is actively engages in your presentations.
Audience Polling: Ask the audience a question, then ask them to respond by raising their hands, forming groups (voting with their feet), or other method of expressing individual opinions.
Audience Questionnaire: Use a short, simple list of questions to get people warmed up for your topic or to get them to think more deeply about what you’ve presented. Keep it short and simple so that it doesn’t derail the presentation by confusing the audience.
Small Group Discussion: Ask the audience to spend three to five minutes discussing a point raised in your presentation. Have a very clear, limited prompt for the groups, or you can give each group a different prompt. To keep the activity short and efficient, tell members of the audience to form groups with the people next to them.
Questions (with index cards): Answer questions from the audience. First, ask them to write a question or two on an index card you’ve provided for each of them. Then, collect the cards and work with them at the end of the presentation.
Wrap Around Response: In smaller audiences of 30 or fewer members, have each person respond (ten to fifteen seconds!) to a prompt in order around the room. Remember to make sure the prompt is short and clear so as not to confuse the audience.
Group Brainstorming: Have the audience shout out ideas around an issue, problem, question, idea. Record responses on the board; you may need more than one recorder.
Simulation: Create an activity that mimics a situation or process directly related to your artist. The exercise has to be controlled in terms of time and scope. Some examples from previous presentations:
