Webinar Design – The Team Webinar
Winning the Engagement & Accessibility Game
Team Webinar Assignment Details
Step One – The Choice
Select a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice from the topics below, then sit back and wait for your team assignment.
- Audio/Video: use of tools for user created audio or video and editing software. IE: Audacity, Adobe Spark, Techsmith Relay, etc.
- Collaborative Tools: The use of Cloud based tools that enable two or more people to collaborate on a single document or project. All documents live on the cloud. IE: Google Docs/Drive, Diigo, Voicethreat, Hypothes.is.
- eLearning Authoring: Authoring tools support hte development of eLearning including creation of user interactions, assessments, etc. IE: Captivate, Articulate Storyline.
- Graphics & Animation: Graphics are important components worth including in eLearning design. These tools center around graphics, animations, and diagramming. IE: Adobe Animate, Illustrator, After Effects, or something like Inkscape, Blender, Photoshop, GIMP.
- Learning Management Systems (LMS): Software for application and tracking of learning. IE: Canvas, Blackboard.
- Social Networking/Social Media: Many Instructional Designers beliee learning is a social activity, some of our best learning experiences happen in group/team settings. These tools offer an interesting avenue for teaching. IE: Twitch, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram.
- Non-technical Instructional Topics: Flipped Classrooms, Virtual Science Labs, High Impact Practices in eLearning, Games & Learning, Storytelling/Digital Storytelling, etc.
Step Two – The Game Plan
Our Team Assignment: eLearning – Articulate Storyline
We were a team of two, we learned quickly that this would be a challenge as not only were we facilitating from many miles away, but the two of us would need to pass the baton, monitor chat, handle whiteboards, breakout rooms, and anything else to keep the ball rolling. No pun there, we hadn’t even figured out what to do yet. Although we were coming at this from two completely different angles, it wasn’t hard to find a way to connect the dots. Daryl was all about accessibility and I was driven by the power of games. We found that we could use Storyline to showcase both and we were off. Creating not only a pre-game, to give us an idea of how much our audience knew about our topic, but also splitting our attendees into groups and making what they learned during the webinar, a game in itself.
With our plan in place we began working on graphics, narrations, promotional materials, a battery of examples for attendees to reference after the webinar, and the website that would house all the information. Check it all out below, including a link to the webpage which houses a recording of the webinar.
Winning the Engagement & Accessibility Game
The Plan
It didn’t take us long to come up with the idea of combining the importance of both accessibility and games to foster engagement in learning. If it’s not accessible it won’t be engaging and if you can tap into the power of games while making content accessible it’s a double win!
Our plan became to have attendees play a short online game, the bicycle game shown below, with a few questions on accessibility prior to the webinar. During the webinar we would showcase another slant on a virtual learning game as we split our attendees into teams, introduced them to their team player piece and I would manually move them around the board based on team score from the bicycle game and team responses to questions during the webinar. The big prize ….. bragging rights!
I built the pre-game in Storyline and put a link on the webpage for those registering to play. I then built a simple game board and animal characters as player markers for each team.
We would open the webinar by introducing the attendees to their teams and introducing the concept of the game, then I would present a short training to show our attendees how to quickly edit the game bicycle game template that they had played prior to the webinar. Just before sending the teams to their 1st breakout room I introduced the game board and showed each team where they stood on the board, as well as introduced how they would move around the board.
This was followed by a short breakout room session where we asked them to discuss what types of games they might think they could use during a class and how they might adopt them. This game me time to update the team spreadsheet .
When we returned we got responses from the breakout room and they saw game board results and I turned it over to Daryl to lead the accessibility where he would show them.
In the meantime I used some much needed time to update the team spreadsheet and the game board with the results of the break out session.
Step 3 – Promotional Materials
Promoting the webinar would require two types of promotional materials and a registration page so we could communicate with our attendees and have an idea of how many were joining us. We settled on a podcast radio clip and a webpage for our promotional items. Daryl took primary responsibility for the radio clip and I built the webpage.
Podcast Radio Clip
It made sense to combine the concept of games and accessibility right from the start. The idea was to give the attendees a glimpse at what was to come, without giving them too much information. Best to leave them guessing at least a little bit!
Pre Game
Many sports today have a pregame show, so we figured we should as well. We took a different slant with our pre-game, we built an actual knowledge based game, similar to a pretest, and asked our participants to jump in before the webinar and see what they knew! This fosters engagement and lets the presenters know how much knowledge those attending have ahead of time and the initial level of engagement even before the webinar begins.
This short, four question game, was created in Articulate Storyline. Players select a color for their bicycle, then answer questions and move around the game board. Responses to their answers let them know if they were correct and if not what the correct answer was. Would you like to play? Use the link provided at the top of this page to head to the website and find a link to our pre-game.
Armed & Ready To Roll
We had our game plan, our promotional materials, our pre-game, the game board to play during the webinar, our registration page had been launched, it was preseason and we were off to practice. Learning to pass slides, man breakout rooms, update the spreadsheet that housed the team player stats, and move the team markers on the board was no small quest. At one point I think we both wondered how this was going to go. If you really want to know, click the link to the webinar webpage, above, and go check out the recording!
Notes on Facilitating a Zoom Webinar
Little did we know that our pre-COVID co-facilitation of this webinar from two different locations proved to be a glimpse into the near future. Shortly after our small team of two tackled the challenges of co-facilitating a game with a slide deck, breakout rooms, monitoring chat, and advancing a game board we found ourselves “going live” with many of these tools when the COVID pandemic drove most of society into what was a very unfamiliar work from home experience. This course and particularly my experience facilitating this webinar were key to helping other with the transition to online meetings and learning shortly thereafter.