Using an Audience Response System to Collect Live Data
March 9, 2022
Since the beginning of the new millennium, audience response systems have come a long way. Bulky, hard to configure units with wires running from a control box to each participant’s hand-held selection device have been replaced with PowerPoint® integration and wireless keypads that rely on the latest RF technologies to ensure fast, secure, and accurate responses. Presenters, seminar instructors, and group leaders can use today’s systems to engage with their audience in ways that improves learning, increases retention, encourages participation, and heightens event satisfaction while collecting valuable data for analyzing answers to a broad range of questions.
Why audience response systems are better than phone apps.
If you’ve tried using phone apps to encourage audience participation at a group event (or when you hosted an important meeting of the minds), it's likely that you already know the pitfalls of relying on unreliable phone-based applications. Whereas some people are well-adept at using smartphones, others can struggle with a simple sheet of instructions on how to find and install the basic program. Still others will be immediately distracted by a personal text, email, or social media post and may end up surfing online rather than fully participating in your group event. Moreover, phone apps often require multiple steps for the participant to respond to a question and your event can be plagued by problems caused by poor Wi-Fi signals and dying phone batteries. The one thing you can count on is there are bound to be problems using a phone app that will interfere with your group’s overall experience.
How to Engage Your Target Audience in Real Time
Many presenters and instructors have found that it is more difficult to capture their audiences attention in the post-pandemic world. Although that likely has nothing to do with the coronavirus, it is easy to see how everyone could be a little rusty after living long months of disruptions to their normal routine. Nonetheless, there is no good excuse for not successfully engaging with your audience. Depending on the presenter’s specific requirements, audience response equipment can be used to improve participation and gather data anonymously or individually tracked for:
- Seminar Sessions – Audience response systems create an interactive environment that provides valuable feedback for a seminar speaker. By polling answers anonymously, it allows for a better understanding of how information is being received.
- Target Audiences – Audience response systems capture the audience’s attention, provide an equal opportunity for participants to engage, poll answers anonymously, and quickly gathers important data for future analysis and actions.
- Training Events – Audience response systems improve the delivery of knowledge and create the perfect opportunity for the audience to provide valuable feedback. Question and answer features can be used anonymously or to track individual responses.
- Large Presentations – Audience response systems boost audience attentiveness, foster better knowledge retention, confirm the audience’s understanding, and facilitate real-time response to information being delivered to a large group.
Creatively designed audience engagement tools can allow presenters and event organizers to quickly break the ice and engage via a “live” poll, a fact-finding survey, or simple quiz. The audience immediately participates in your event by selecting the answers they believe to be correct using a wireless keypad. Companies and organizations can seamlessly gather anonymous responses, collect data in real-time, display polling results to participants, and store information for additional analysis. Using a wireless audience response system that is integrated with your presentation software, you can capture any group’s attention while increasing member participation and heightening the overall learning experience.
Event participants nowadays want to be part of the experience and not just passive observers. As a top provider of audience response hardware and presentation software applications, we offer pre-event show services that provide full familiarity with the technology as well as the latest tips to ensure attention and retention via increased participation. When everyone’s answer or opinion counts, contact ProLingo for professional assistance with your group event.
