Emerging Technologies Consulting

My friend and colleague, Barbara Sawhill, has written a great post about the problems of presentations, both live and streaming, in terms of audience participation.  The irony of these presentations is that they are often about creating an interactive classroom environment, offline or online, and yet, they don’t create an interactive environment themselves.  As Barbara points out, we do that in all our sessions.  It’s often a bit unnerving for the audience at first, but then, it seems, they take off and we all learn a lot, which to me is the whole point.  A while back on his blog, George Siemens talked about trying to facilitate a conversation rather than give a presentation and his audience got mad at him.  They wanted slides, dammit!  When you think about it, this is often what happens to students who find themselves suddenly required to participate actively in their own learning.  What do you mean I have to contribute to a blog and say what I think?  What do you mean we’re going to collaboratively write a paper?  Just as we push our audiences past their expectations, we have to do the same with our students.  Too often, we become complacent and just spoon feed them or have a “sink or swim” philosophy.  Coming up with ways to create interactivity looks easy on the surface, but it’s actually harder than preparing lecture notes or slides.  And once you’re in the room, your audience may go off script.  So you have to be able to think on your feet in a way that you don’t when giving a standard presentation or standard lecture.

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