Does it seem your inbox is bursting with announcements for webinars? With face-to-face conferencing ground to a halt during social distancing, professional development has transitioned to an almost entirely virtual experience. Unfortunately, it’s often an underwhelming and disappointing one. Monotone speakers. Loads of bullet point slides—and presenters who just read them—or notes that are drier than dust. Effective in-person teaching and presenting skills are not automatically transferable to the virtual space as evidenced in many webinars.
If you anticipate delivering more webinars and virtual presentations, you can decide to do better. That means learning to be an engaging webinar leader who offers their attendees a dynamic, memorable learning experience. Workshop attendees will take away basic skills and practices that can lead them to design and deliver more engaging webinars. From understanding how and why webinars present special challenges to presenters, to how to start off and wrap up a webinar, to pacing and integration of activation methods, to leveraging the technology of different presentation platforms, attendees will get practical advice and tips from webinar leader Steven Bell, whose experience includes hundreds of webinars, virtual conference keynotes and online workshops.
The outlook for the current and post-coronavirus landscape is that webinars and virtual presentations are likely to emerge as the standard for remote professional development for the foreseeable future. We all need to commit to making them a better user experience. Our colleagues deserve that much. Librarians who attend this one-hour program will be doing their part by committing to be the best possible webinar presenter.
Learning Outcomes
At the end of the session, participants should be able to:
Differentiate the special qualities of webinars from in-person presentations that require presenters to prepare their content and delivery for the virtual environment
Incorporate a set of new skills and techniques into their existing presentation repertoire that will enable them to be a more effective and high-impact webinar presenter
Achieve a higher level of comfort with online presentation platforms, use of video, having a presentation recorded, and other web-presentation technologies that are crucial to a successful webinar. Identify a variety of engagement practices that are useful for designing more interactive webinars and virtual presentations.
Instructor: Steven Bell
Steven J. Bell is the Associate University Librarian for Research and Instructional Services at Temple University. He writes and speaks about academic librarianship, learning technologies, library leadership, higher education, open and affordable learning, design thinking and user experience. He authored two regular columns for Library Journal Academic Newswire, "From the Bell Tower" and "Leading From the Library" from 2009 through 2019. As an adjunct instructor for the San Jose State University iSchool he teaches courses on design thinking and open education librarianship. He is co-author of the book “Academic Librarianship by Design” and editor of the book “Crucible Moments: Inspiring Library Leadership”. Bell is currently an adjunct faculty member for the San Jose State University iSchool where he teaches design thinking.
