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Top Technologies for 2008: Audience Response Systems
January 30, 2008
With the beginning of the 2008, Event Tech blog will be running a series of posts exploring the technologies that will have the greatest impact in our industry.
Audience response systems
Audience response systems provide speakers and presenters with instant feedback and allow for a whole new level of audience participation. Since Audience response is a type of interaction associated with the use of audience response systems, the goal of these tools is to create interactivity between a presenter and his audience. Systems for co-located audiences combine wireless hardware with presentation software and systems for remote audiences may use the telephone or web polls for audiences watching through television or the internet.
There are many reasons for the increasing use of audience response systems (ARS). The tendency for audiences to be influenced by peer pressure is reduced because, unlike hand-raising, it is difficult to see which selection others are making. ARS also allows for faster tabulation of answers for large groups than manual methods. Additionally, many presenters use ARS to take attendance or modify presentations according to audience interests or preferences, which would be highly time-consuming without the system.
Audience response offers many opportunities to enhance group settings. A few of the potential benefits include:
- Improve attentiveness
- Increase knowledge retention
- Encourage audience participation
- Poll anonymously
- Collect aggregate and individual metrics
- Display polling results immediately
- Speed-up decision making
- Foster individual ownership of group decisions
- Create an interactive and fun learning environment
- Confirm audience understanding of key points immediately
The availability of these response systems, such as participant surveys and voting, encourage open streams of communication among organizers, sponsors, and target groups. As events strive to provide relevant content for attendees, audience response systems can help speaker sessions and presentations become an interactive and informative experience.
Posted by Stephen Nold on January 30, 2008 | Comments (0)
