audience engagement techniques
A great way to engage your audience is to include them in your presentation. Practice a variety of effective engagement techniques and games that work with any audience - large or small.
Asking Questions
Asking your audience provocative questions always increases audience engagement. And you should also encourage them to ask you questions!
Agree (fist) / Disagree (palm)
Get everyone to respond to a statement/question without feeling singled out. Read a statement or ask a question that can be answered with “agree” or “disagree.” Instruct everyone who agrees to put a fist in the air; everyone who disagrees puts a palm.. (You can generate debate by asking for volunteers - one person with a fist up and one person with a palm up to explain their reactions.
Human Likert Scale
Get people to respond to a statement/question by moving around and positioning themselves in a physical space. Read a statement/question. People sho agree move to one of the room; people who disagree to the other side; people who can’t decide stand in the middle. Ask volunteers to explain why they moved one way or another.
Anticipation Guide
Get people thinking about the topic before you begin talking. As people walk in, have each person should response to a question or statement on a large flip chart by checking a box labeled nstrongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree. Or write several issues on a flip chart and give people sticky notes to put next to the ones they care about most. Again, ask them why.
Think-Pair-Share Feedback
At the end of your talk, leave lots of time to ask audience members to turn to the person next to them and think of a part of your speech that made sense to them, they disagreed with or have questions about. Give them about a few minutes and then ask them to share with everyone. Great discussions!
Last Voter Standing [to illustrate different political behaviors (e.g. percentage of Americans who vote) or attitudes ( e.g. how many Americans worry about climate change?]
Once you have a topic for your talk, research what percentages of Americans do or don’t think something sbout it or behave in some related way. (Example: Re: voting, only 50 % turn out to vote; only 30% turn out for Congressional elections; about 25% approve of this President etc etc). Have the entire audience stand up to represent the American people as a whole. Then ask about half of the audience to sit down and the other half to remain standing. Explain what those percentages show about Americans behavior or attitudes. Continue by having different proportions of the audience group sit or stand to illustrate the points you want to make. Ask the audience to discuss.
Two Truths and a Lie
You can use this to introduce members in a group to each other or to introduce startling facts about a topic. List three relevant political statements, two being true and one being lie, and then ask the audience to guess which one is the lie. For example you would say, (1) only 0.25% of the American population donate $200 or more to a political campaign, (2) Jimmy Carter was says the United States is now an oligarchy or (3) student voter turnout in elections is now higher than that of older people. Number 3 is the lie. This is a fun way to give out basic facts while at the same time involving the audience.
Questions and Answers
This technique is used to engage the audience in absorbing an important startling fact. When presenting data about a particular issue, instead of just saying it to the audience introduce it in the form of a question. For example, “what percentage of Americans do you think donate over $200 to a political campaign?” Have the audience members throw out some guesses. Chances are they will all be way higher than the actual number so when you reveal the right answer they will be more amazed than if you had just told them out right.
Collision
Have everyone sit in a circle in chairs (no extra chairs),with one person standing in the middle. Someone reads a generally agreed on political statement and everyone who agrees must scramble to find a new chair. The person left standing has to explain why they agreed or not. Next statement read…
Snowball Fight
Give each person a piece of paper to write down what they think is the most important political issue. Have everyone crumple up their paper into a ball, stand up, and have paper ball or “snowball” fight. After 30 seconds of hurling paper, each person picks up the closest paper ball . Then the balls’ issues can be discussed by everyone.