As I was writing my last post “The Sound of Silence”, I decided to seek a definition of “webinar” as I understand the term. Surprisingly, this proved a difficult task. Most definitions seemed to limit webinars to information conveyence, some made reference to interactivity, and a surprisingly large amount suggested that interactive features be disabled (or not enabled) to limit interruptions and maintain “control”. All this searching for a definition started to make me think… Through all our phases of selling the webinar concept to management, piloting the concept and rolling it out on a larger scale as we are now, I have had to explain what a webinar is. As the concept of webinars meets more and more with the real people in my organisation, I have tried to simplify my explanation to be comparable with already familiar concepts.
At the beginning of each of our sessions, which currently all contain several employees who are new to the technology, the webinar concept is defined as a combination of a teleconference, PowerPoint presentation, eletronic communal whiteboard and instant messenging chat, which when used together can achieve something more powerful than each individual component.
All our current sessions are designed with an introduction to the webinar tools, and participants are guided through each of the tools with practice on all annotation and expression tools. It is made clear to all participants that the session is designed with the intention of allowing them to use the tools on hand to collaborate in the webinar, and that their input in this manner is highly valued.
It is the key principle of our webinar strategy that interactivity is a critical driver of the success of a session. I believe that webinar interactivity needs to start with concept, drive design, define facilitation, and focus on participant engagement.
The focus on collaboration, communicaiton and interaction fits with my beliefs about learning using technology, best summed up in Stephen Downes’ now infamous 2005 article “e-Learning 2.0” where is it stated “Web 2.0 is an attitude not a technology”.
Filed under: e-Learning, technology, webinars | Tagged: death by webinar, definition, interaction, webinar
