Do you give PowerPoint presentations? Do you want an engaged audience? If your answer to either of these questions is “yes”, audience response systems (A.R.S.) will make a world of difference to your presentations. An easy-to-use A.R.S. takes minutes to set up. It will make your PowerPoint presentation more interesting, interactive and more memorable. No matter how many people you are speaking in front of, your audience will love this interactive element.
Audience response systems allow you to poll your audience and show results in real time. It works just like the ‘Ask the Audience’ round of television’s Who Want’s to be a Millionaire? Ask the audience a polling or voting question and they respond using their handheld keypads.
Why Audiences Enjoy Interaction Via Audience Response Systems
- A polling question at the beginning breaks the ice between presenter and audience
- Offer audiences the opportunity to give feedback and opinions, it will make them feel valued and important.
- Audience input encourages conversation and debate between themselves and you, the presenter
- Contributing to a presentation will make them feel more involved.
- It’s something different!
Importantly, interactive PowerPoint presentations leave audiences feeling they have contributed to an event. It makes a one way conversation turn into a two way conversation. A monologue to a dialogue!
How presenters benefit from using A.R.S.
Using A.R.S.s is a great way to engage your audience. Furthermore, it’s also a very effective tool for you as the presenter. This has been scientifically proven. When an audience know a polling question coming, they will listen more attentively in order to give the right answer. This is true weather you are asking them a fact or an opinion. Here’s a summary of how PowerPoint presenters can benefit from using a polling system at their event.
- Keep your audience engaged
- Collect instant data from your group, class or audience.
- Instant results give you instant content for discussion
- Gauge an audience’s understanding of a subject
- Identify differences of opinion
- A data collection tool for gathering event feedback.
- Make your PowerPoint presentation more interesting and memorable
Whether you are polling 1,000 people in a conference hall or 10 people in a learning environment, setting up a system is easy. Just basic PowerPoint skills are enough to get you up and running. The polling element of your PowerPoint slides are operated by clicking, just like in the rest of your presentation.
Using A.R.S. in 3 simple steps
1) Hire or purchase keypads and a receiver from Crowd Insight.
2) Create your interactive slides using the polling software. This can be done as a brand-new presentation or embed them into an existing one.
3) Start your interactive presentation and start engaging your audience.
Below are some examples of some real polling slides used at events.
Polling using apps
As well as keypad A.R.S.s, audiences can now interact with presentations using their own devices. These can be smart phones, tablets & laptops. This works in just the same way as keypad systems except Wi-Fi in your presentation space is a must. At Crowd Insight, our favourite polling app is Vevox. This allows presenters to poll audiences and ask open ended questions. For more Vevox information, click here.
Audience members interact via their browser or downloading the Vevox app. The audience then enter a pre-set 9 digit code and they can start interacting with your presentation.
Ask different types of questions
The most popular way to use a system is asking your audience a multiple-choice question, just like on Who Want’s to be a Millionaire. However, Crowd Insight’s systems allow you to do so much more than that. Our software now allows your audience to:
a) Choose more than one option in a multiple-choice question
b) Rank several options in a specific order. e.g. favourite option to least favourite option
c) Rate a number of options (e.g. Rate this venue out of 5)
d) Respond to a ‘Before and After Question’. This allows you to repeat a question so you can compare responses
e) Send free numeric text. E.g. How many kilos does this car weigh?
f) Using the keypad, send text such as questions and comments to the presenter.
Asking a range of question types adds even more interest to your interactive PowerPoint presentation.
For our customers, help with programming slides is never far away. The Crowd Insight team are here to help. Other resources include a User’s Guide that comes with our software. There are also plenty of help resources and assistance online
To start making your PowerPoint presentation interactive. Call us today on +44 1483 300121 or email info@crowdinsight.co.uk
Keep it interactive
