Dr. Carmen Simon of Rexi-media recently delivered this exciting webinar for us. Here are some highlights from this very engaging event…
Most the audience members shared that they felt most bored during meetings or presentations. Dr. Simon then defined boredom and led a discussion about how boredom makes us feel. This graphic she shared outlines the symptoms of boredom:
Whenever we develop and deliver presentation materials we need to keep in mind that we cannot always overcome the audience’s dispositional boredom due to personality traits but we CAN overcome situation boredom by carefully preparing our materials with a clear purpose and a goal to engage and inspire. Understanding your audience personalities is a key to understanding what will keep them engaged.
Presentations that demand attention will help to eliminate boredom from training materials. Dr. Simon provided 3 techniques for developing training presentations with this in mind:
1) Variety: The more trainers vary the content, the more boredom is alleviated
- Two tips given to accomplish variety were to try to give the audience something to think about and also incorporating a surprising or different format into the presentation other than PowerPoint (like a video or audio file)
- A warning: Boredom can arise from monotony as well as over stimulation, so trainers need to work to find a balance
2) Challenge: Accelerated pacing, novelty or first time experiences often provide challenges that demand attention.
3) Complexity: Messy and non-obvious content help maintain interest.
4) Feedback: Using feedback to develop content relevant to the target audience leads to increased attentiveness.
See examples of these techniques by watching the full recording of the webinar.