Comments on: Five Ways to Run a Deadly Online Seminar

By: the.effing.librarian

the.effing.librarian — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 21:56:39 +0000

I hate hosting online; it terrifies the crap out of me. Because of that terror, I spend a lot of time asking the audience questions and asking for feedback. If someone chats something, I try to read it out (and attribute it correctly). I email the chat to everyone after and post relevant docs to Google docs and give out the link that doesn’t require them to have Gmail for access. Thanks for the tip on playing music: I usually sing a selection of Shirley Bassey tunes to test everyone’s sound, but your idea is way better… (found link to this from http://twitter.com/ALALibrary)

By: Kristina Hoeppner

Kristina Hoeppner — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 07:23:33 +0000

Hi Alan,

Thanks for extending the timeframe fro writing comments on your posts. Vacationing on a small island was too much fun to read blog posts (though yours are always worthwhile reading, laughing and pondering about).

When I finally got to reading your post, I wondered if we had not been in a webpresentation (don’t want to call it webinar etc. anymore as the interaction was not like in a seminar or workshop) together because I had the very same experience. It is really too bad to see such examples especially when there are many best practice examples around. However, I have the feeling that the trainers who ran the workshops did not know much about this kind of online delivery (and did not care much).

By: The good, the bad & the online talk « an academic at work

The good, the bad & the online talk « an academic at work — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:01:40 +0000

[...] in terms of giving the presentation, I highlight 5 key points from CogDog’s blog post on Deadly Online Seminars. Read it for yourself to truly appreciate his advice…and [...]

By: Media Literacy: Making Sense Of New Technologies And Media by George Siemens – July 18 09 « Argument

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 22:31:49 +0000

[...] Five Ways To Run a Deadly Online Seminar – Alan Levine reflects on his experience attending an online seminar: [...]

By: Heike Philp

Heike Philp — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 22:29:08 +0000

It seems that webinar hosts are still using webinar 1.0 style of frontal delivery. Thanks to Alan for mentioning Jonathan Finkelstein’s book ‘Learning in real-time’, the bible of live online delivery as far as we are concerned.

We train educators on how to use webconferencing aright and have introduced two ‘products’ to try to avoid the above deadly recipe.

a) A learning conversation ‘On demand’

What is unusual about this is, that participants of the webinar request to meet a speaker or a trainer, not the other way round. The other way round would be that the training organisation provides the webinar dictating not only who speaks but also the content. ‘On demand’ means that the participants request their guest speaker and invite their peers to listen to the expert. They are also asked to provide the questions to the guest speaker and run the moderation. I know that sounds very unusual but it works really well. http://virtual-round-table.ning.com

b) Speedy presentations

Presenters who wish to present their content with slides may do so, within a time limit of 3min 20sec with 10 slides auto-advancing every 20sec. We call these presentations PRESTO10×20 which stands for PRESent your TOpic with 10 slides auto-advancing every 20sec. Several of these Prestos may be recorded before the session or run in the session. The rest of the time is for questions and answers. Again, this might sound unusual but you will be suprised how much can be said in little more than 3min.

Imagine webinars were learning conversations and content was to be presented speedily or on demand, would this work to put live back into live online webinar?

By: Media Literacy: Making Sense Of New Technologies And Media by George Siemens - July 18 09 | 1 RSSBLOG.com

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 09:23:54 +0000

[...] Ways To Run a Deadly Online Seminar – Alan Levine reflects on his experience attending an online seminar: New media technologies are the new means to explore, study, research, experiment and discover. [...]

By: Media Literacy: Making Sense Of New Technologies And Media by George Siemens – July 18 09 | jatiN mahindrA doT coM

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 09:05:56 +0000

[...] Five Ways To Run a Deadly Online Seminar – Alan Levine reflects on his experience attending an online seminar: [...]

By: Media Literacy: Making Sense Of New Technologies And Media by George Siemens – July 18 09 | Happened Lately

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 07:15:31 +0000

[...] Five Ways To Run a Deadly Online Seminar – Alan Levine reflects on his experience attending an online seminar: [...]

By: Melody McCollum

Melody McCollum — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:27:27 +0000

I am an online facilitator and designer and I use WebEx. Very successfuly I might add. The problem I see within my orgainization is, as someone else mentioned, people delivering webinars or small group learning events who don’t have a clue as to what they are doing. They haven’t mastered the technology, haven’t been a participant and have had no training. But then I attend a lot of webinars that are hosted/facilitated by people who are supposedly an expert and they are awful. Killer powerpoints, bad delivery or, a platform such as GoToMeeting that does not allow for interaction. (Yes, I went to that webinar too) I left waaaayyy before it was over. There are skills required for this venue just as there are for any face to face presentation or training. Why don’t people get that???????

By: Death by webinar – what a way to go « Onlignment

Death by webinar – what a way to go « Onlignment — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:38:02 +0000

[...] Death by webinar – what a way to go In his excellent CogDog blog (how crazy does that sound?), Alan Levine reflects on some really horrific webinar experiences he has had. He sets out his Five ways to run a deadly online seminar: [...]