Hello! I’m Sheila B Robinson, aea365’s Lead Curator and sometimes Saturday contributor. Evaluation is my newer career. I’m actually an educator, having taught in K12 schools and at a university. I’m also a professional developer, having provided PD courses, workshops, coaching, and mentoring to educators and evaluators for more than 15 years, so I’m no stranger to presentation design.
Lessons Learned: Check out p2i tools before designing any presentation! I’ve learned so much from AEA’s Potent Presentations Initiative (p2i) – AEA’s effort to help members improve their presentation skills, particularly around delivering conference presentations with specific advice about how to make your presentations more potent by focusing on three things: message, design, and delivery – and have incorporated these principles and strategies into my work.
Rad Resource: Coming soon! The new p2i Audience Engagement Workbook. I’m honored to be able to share my experience in designing and facilitating presentations and professional learning opportunities as we add to the family of p2i tools with the Audience Engagement Workbook, featuring the WHY, WHAT and HOW of audience engagement, along with 20 specific strategies any presenter can use with limited investment of time or money.
Each strategy is described and rated on a number of dimensions such as ease of application, materials needed, cost, and the degree of movement for participants. There’s even a special section on engaging audiences in a webinar environment!
Hot Tip: One strategy to try now!
Four Corners: Choose just about any topic or question that has 3 or 4 positions or answers (e.g. In your family are you a first born, only child, oldest child, or in the middle? In your evaluation work, do you mainly use qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods? Do you consider yourself a novice, experienced, or expert evaluator?) and ask participants to walk to the corner of the room that you specify. Once there, give them an opportunity (3-5 minutes) to discuss this commonality, then return to their seats. If time permits, call on volunteers to share some insights from their brief discussion.
Variation: Ask participants a question that requires them to take sides (usually two sides, but could be three or more). Ask them to walk to the side of the room assigned to that position, and discuss with others who share their views. You can ask them to form two lines facing each other and have a debate with participants from each side presenting support for their position.
Stephanie Evergreen, information designer, dataviz diva, and p2i lead is putting the finishing touches on the layout and design of the workbook and we’ll have it up and ready for you well ahead of Evaluation 2014! In the meantime, look for Stephanie to preview additional strategies in the next AEA Newsletter!
Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.
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Really enjoyed this post, as I am becoming more and more interested in how to deliver information to the audience that will keep them engaged. I would love to be informed when this workbook becomes available.
Please be sure to let us know when it is published and where/how to obtain a copy!!