As web conferencing has become more popular chances are that you have attended an online seminar where the presentation has been done via web conferencing. Usually you are simply sitting in the audience on a conference call listening while watching the presentation on the web conference with little or no interaction with the speaker. Although this is the most used method of web conferencing, the people who first came up with the idea had much bigger plans for web conferencing.
When web conferencing was first invented a lot of effort was made to make the service a collaborative tool where people could work on a document together from great distance. This ability to collaborate was seen as the the killer application. The adoption of web conferencing services is more and more widespread but interactive web conferencing is still lagging in its use overall. Here are some of the features that allow for interactive web conferencing.
- Application Sharing – Application sharing provides users the ability to share their desktop with the other participants on the web conference and permits any participant to control another computer. This means that participants can actually control a document or spreadsheet and input or edit data on it. Much like you would pass around a piece of paper in an in person meeting for people to mark up, you can actually change the document on the fly while on the web conference.
- Whiteboarding- This application permits participants to mark up a virtual whiteboard seen by all participants while on an interactive web conference. Much like someone would go up to a whiteboard to discuss things while in a conference room, participants can easily do the same on the web conference.
- Polling/Q&A – Even a presentation can be an interactive web conference through the use of polling and Q&A features. By engaging the audience you will have a more stimulating meeting and have better retention of the material. Polling permits you to survey your audience during an interactive web conference and the Q&A feature allows you to conduct an orderly Q&A session for the presentation.
It seems that maybe people don’t work in a collaborative manner and allowing someone to control your PC is a little scary to some people as well. But even if you are only doing a presentation using a web conferencing service you can make it an interactive web conference by adding polling and Q&A to your web conference. You will find that the more you can make it an interactive web conference the more your participants will stay engaged with your presentation.