By Amirah Yasmin Mohd Azmir
“If I had to sit down and watch through it again, I would do it willingly!” – A feedback seldom received during online programmes but not for Inspire Club IIUM which managed to maintain an average of 150 participants until the end.
Inspire Club remarkably defeated the infamous online meeting curse last weekend (5 September) with an active audience engagement for three hours during FRIENDS SMK Bandar Baru Sungai Buloh (SMKBBSB) .
The programme aimed to pave the way for upper form students for potential career opportunities. Throughout the programme, fruitful interactions were exchanged between the audience and speakers consisting of IIUM students and alumni who are also members of the club.
It is not strange to our community that attention span during meetings has declined after its shift to the online platform. Nevertheless, like any other inconvenience, there would always be a method to beat the system.
Here are the tricks applied by Inspire Club IIUM:
1. Know your target audience. Acknowledge the time they are more willing to attend the organised programme. For example, avoid having programmes early in the morning if you know that the target audience is not early risers.
2. Create a programme based on the audience’s interest and not yours. This would secure better attention from the audience throughout the programme since they have curiosity.
3. Attempt to have the same wavelength with the audience. This helps to increase engagement with the participants, thus allowing them to stay with you until the end.
4. Make sure that your programme is fast-paced whenever possible. By doing this, it prevents your audience to get bored by the subtopics since they would receive compact and comprehensive information. (Friends SMKBBSB allocated 15-20 minutes per slot with occasional 3-minute breaks)
5. Diversify and compartmentalise your slots to have a structured presentation of content throughout the programme. Vary the slots with different ways of presentation such as using PowerPoint, online whiteboard or other online presentation methods so that the audience would not lose interest.
6. Occupy the audience with activities. If you are the only one talking, your participants might not have a strong attention span and motivation to listen to your content. Whenever possible, prepare materials for the participants to work on to improve engagement.
“I’m really grateful to have such an amazing team,” said Nur Syahirah Jalalludin, the programme manager of Friend SMKBBSB. “Alhamdulillah, throughout the programme, we were able to have 150 students participating in the meet till the end,” Syahirah added.
The spectacular achievement by Inspire Club under the supervision of CENSERVE IIUM is also marked by numerous follow-up questions and positive feedback from the students of SMKBBSB.***