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Instructional
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Don't be me! |
Anatomy of an
On-Line Lecture:
From New York to Singapore
This is the text of
a reference
Doug Johnson (RCET-SW’s main speaker in March 1999 ) made as one example of the
instructional design process one can go through in the preparation of just one
presentation. |
Last evening at 10:45 P.M., I found
myself giving a speech in an empty office. I was delivering the keynote address to a
conference of 500 senior military and government officials attending a conference on
learning in Singapore. People have often asked about the logistics and planning process
for a video-conference keynote, so I thought that I would share a few observations from
this speech.
Preparation: The level of preparation for a speech like this is a lot higher
than most in-person sessions. First, one has to make sure that the technology will work.
We used dial up Video-Conference, bonding 3 ISDN lines from Singapore to our lab in
Saratoga Springs, New York. This gave us a very acceptable 30 frames per second
connection. Even though we use video-conferencing several times a month for such events,
there is always the fear that the network will not work. (A good fear, given some of the
problems we have encountered over the years.) In fact, we made a 20 minute back-up
videotape and sent it to our hosts, in case the lines could not connect. Ironically, the
lines worked perfectly, but the courier service did not deliver the emergency videotape. |
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Briefing: Next, we had to deal with everyone’s
visualization of how things would work. There always seems to be more anxiety about these
segments than a normal in-person speech. It was great working with our hosts in Singapore.
And, we found ourselves having lots of email, phone and video rehearsals to get everything
lined up and focused. As I was presenting to a different cultural group, our hosts did a
great job of suggesting elements of my presentations that might work or not work outside
of the United States. We had a great level of honesty with each other and were able to
hone in the presentation to the needs and interests of the group. I had to remember that
you never have enough time to cover EVERYTHING and deleted about 40% of my slides to make
it more interesting and interactive.
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Getting Pumped: Normally, I get psyched up for a presentation when
I start to see the audience come into the room. Here I had to handle the psyche up
differently. I actually decided to load up my brain with the setting. Went to dinner at a
local Asian restaurant, looked a collection of pictures from a previous visit to Singapore
and even went on the internet and looked up the weather and local news from the
destination city. Then, I saw a link to a Real Audio live feed from Singapore’s radio
stations and listened to the Mandarin Top 20 music countdown over the net. |
Instructional Design: I had done my scope and sequence of topics to
discuss. Now, the really important aspect of instructional design - selecting the mix of
learning activities and supporting technologies to make this a high energy vs.. boring
lecture distance learning experience. My goal was to have a different visual every 3
minutes and to change the format of my presentation several times during the presentation.
Here were some of the items we used during the speech:- 5 PowerPoint Slides, each with
only 2 sentences on each one. I try to DECREASE the amount of text to use the slides as a
PROMPT rather than a content delivery tool.- Two camera shots of myself. We get spoiled
during professional sports, where the camera angle switches every few seconds. While I
could not handle that level of diversity, I did set two pre-set camera zoom levels, to
give the audience some diversity viewing.- Three hand raising polls. I love to ask
audiences to vote quickly, with their hands, on a number of topics. Since we were focusing
on distance learning, I asked a question about how long they would stay on a web page that
loaded slowly or was boring. As you might suspect, there was great agreement and laughter
about how learners in the digital age are only one mouse click away from leaving.
| - Two discussion moments. Twice, I asked the audience to turn to their neighbor and have a 30 second
discussion. While most folks don’t think this will work over video-conferencing, it
has always given a great sense of energy to my keynotes delivered over a distance. |
- Still Picture. I used a picture of General Colin Powell from our recent
TechLearn Conference to help tell a story about his stint as a trainer in the military. It
gave a 30 second view of another person and helped with the power of that story. |
- Resources on Web. I built a specialized website for this speech, with hundreds of
links and resources. This lets folks relax about the time limitation and even reduces
their need to take notes. It allows the video portion to be more relaxed and serve to
launch a larger set of learnings on-line. |
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Web Content. I decided to play 30 seconds of the Singapore Radio Station that I had been
listening to prior to the speech. When they heard the Mandarin announcer from 93.3 FM, the
audience felt a connection and a lightness was added to the air. |
- Questions. Our hosts did a great job of positioning microphones and camera angles to allow
for audience questions. We reserved about 15 minutes after the speech for audience
questions and it added a great deal to the sense of being able to "drill down"
to the content that was hot for the learners. |
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Decisions Made: Trainers are always making
decisions. In this instance, decisions were made prior to the presentation
and I made several adjustments right before my segment. My hosts in
Singapore did a great job of letting me listen and watch 2 speakers before
my keynote. I tied them into the presentation and even changed one of my
slides at the last minute to not
replicate a speaker that had done a great job of covering a topic I was
planning to address. Cut! That gave more time for the remainder of the
presentation. During the presentation, I looked at how the audience was
responding and added a number of last minute points and even one activity,
based on their positive response to the
more interactive elements.
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Learnings:
I am always struck by how much energy it takes to do a presentation
over distance. You put out a large amount of energy to project your
excitement about content. In addition, I was producing my own
presentation, by selecting buttons and clicking the mouse on my
laptop. This added another element of focus. Yet, it always pays off.
I saved 28 hours of travel for a 40 minute speech I saved our hosts a
lot of money and it actually helped us to "walk the walk" about the
power of technology assisted learning. If you are going to give a
speech using these technologies, remember that it will take lots of
prep and keep your sense of humor about the process. We are all
breaking new ground as we create a model of accessing expertise from
afar....we better keep our humanity and flexibility in the process.
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*Edited by D.A.
Watters--March, 1999.
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