Have you ever been excited by the thought of attending a learning event and then been let down so badly you want to write to complain (even though it was free!)?
I signed up to a webcast on ‘Introducing interactivity into course creation to improve learning outcomes’ last week and was really looking forward to it. The pre-event admin was spot on and I logged on eagerly at 15 minutes before time to ensure that I had all the client software downloaded in time.
The first (slight) let down was that I couldn’t log on until 5 minutes before start time. However, I logged on and the event started.
The first thing I was disappointed about was there was no welcome, no chat, no real introduction – it just started with no acknowledgement that there was an audience. I was feeling edgy because I was the only participant showing. Was I the only attendee then?
As the session progressed, there was no interactivity of any kind – I wondered if it was in fact a recording. So I checked in the chat box – ‘no you are not the only attendee’, said the Host. Ok, so how could I interact with other delegates?
After 20 minutes still no interactivity of any kind (not even asking a question or letting me interact with a Poll or Chat question). And then Bingo! a participant entered a question in the Q&A panel. And then one of the attendees (a well-known IITT member) asked the question to ‘all attendees’ – is there anyone there? A couple of replies saying yes they were there but hadn’t realised there were more attending!
32 minutes and still no interaction, but I twigged it wasn’t a recording as the rapport between the two presenters (one in Norway I think and one in London) gave it away.
35 minutes and the presenters closed the session – no-one asked a question – and the meeting ended swiftly.
So, not a good – even decent – experience of an interactive online learning event. But I did learn some very valuable lessons from the event – how not to run such an event – and just how professional the IITT webcasts are!
