Using a Visualizer to enhance online learning and web meetings by Thomas Zangerle

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2. Web conferencing was already a hot topic even before the crisis, as we have also
seen the strong interest from our customers about Zoom and Teams integration on
our Cynap product range. But now the demand exploded…
Corona-shutdowns in various countries around the world, forced us to stay at home
and work from and learn from there.
And this really boosted the demand!!!
Current situation with webconferencing solutions like Zoom, Teams, Google
Hangouts, Slack, Whereby, Pexip, Starleaf, Jitsii….
Diagram: Two weeks after the pandemic was declared Zoom reached more than 3
million downloads a day
That’s a really impressive number, but what is even more impressive is the number of
calls per day:
During December 2019 Zoom had about 10 million users/calls a day
In March 2020 it was already 200 million and in April it’s more than 300… I guess
more to come!
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3. And this will remain for a few months and afterwards it will change the way how we
work and collaborate together.
But this webinar is not about the success of Zoom, they do a great job anyway. This
example should just illustrate how essential webconferencing is in the meantime to
survive in home office or to achieve distance learning in schools and Universities
worldwide.
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4. Let’s do a quick survey right at the beginning, as I’m interested what do you use
personally:
Which meeting apps do you use at home?
Can be more than one answer, as based on my own experience there are two or
three tools in use, depending on the companies you’re working with. I see this also
with my kids, the use Teams in school, but also more specific education tools for
communicating via web.
Show results…
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5. But just because we’re using new and fancy web solutions, which let us communicate
and collaborate without physical presence, does that also mean communication got
improved?
I have my doubt’s…
The majority of meetings are considered boring, even when having it physical in a
meeting room.
For a lot of people PowerPoint is the ultimate tool when it comes to doing a
presentation, so no wonder that 95% of all presentation are done by using this
software. According to a survey in German companies, 84% of all presentations are
considered to be drowsy and boring. 13% of the presentations are considered okay,
but that means 97% of the presentations done today have room for improvement,
sometimes a lot.
But what about webmeeting and online classes?
This is probably even worse, as there are additional challenges:
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6. Just talking heads meetings
Means also the absence of majority of body language
Almost no interactivity
Either we talk or we show some Powerpoint slides in addition…
What else?
Source: Wall Street Journal, 2004
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7. A specific challenge with webmeetings is that most of our communication is non-
verbal.
Of course you can see the presenters face and hear the tonality of voice, but there is
a lack of the full experience. And of course a lot of people are using slides to get their
message across. And we all know the quality of slides which are in use for daily
meetings… normally crowded with text!
Why is text so inferior during a presentation? Primitive men didn’t have a written
language – or did they?
Cave drawings, carvings, and hieroglyphs actually were a form of written language
that happened to consist of pictures. In fact, the type in this slide consists of dozens
of little pictures – letters, numbers, and punctuation. That is why the brain takes
longer to process text – it has to recognize characteristics of each individual letter
before it can decipher a word. Indeed, a picture really is worth a thousand words.
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8. So we have to rethink our approach when doing web meetings.
In a physical meeting you battle with the slide next to you (normally overloaded with
text, but that’s another topic), but in a web meeting or in an online class you have
additional challenges.
People can be distracted by a lot of things. Their home environment, their kids, their
pets, you name it… But they can also check Facebook or write emails that is not really
noticeable for the host. In a physical meeting you would notice if someone is
distracted permanently by his smartphone or computer and you could address it.
I mean how many of you are now paying full attention, honestly?
Not writing emails, checking social media, thinking about getting a cup of coffee and
some biscuits…
The only thing we can try to achieve is capture our audience and keep their attention.
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9. This is a famous quote from David Ogilvy, from a time that was definitely less hectic
than our times.
So our challenge is even bigger and we’ve to ask ourselves, how do we capture the
audience and even more important, how do we keep the attention?
What is our fire???
Let’s have a look at some of the possibilities a Visualizer can offer.
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10. Does anyone know the book “BRAIN RULES” by John Medina (it’s worth reading)?
Rule #4 says: We don't pay attention to boring things.
What we pay attention to is profoundly influenced by our memory. Experiences we’ve
had so far predict when we should be paying attention. Culture matters too. Whether
in business or in school, these differences can greatly effect how an audience
perceives a given presentation.
We pay attention to things like emotions, threats and sex. Regardless of who you are,
the brain pays a great deal of attention to these questions:
Can I eat it? Will it eat me? Can I mate with it? Will it mate with me? And the most
important one for every presenter out there: Have I seen it before?
If you surprise your audience you can be sure that you will have their attention. After
certain amount of time, disappointing to teachers and Powerpoint- or Keynote-
presenters everywhere, audience‘s attention drops dramatically.
LIVE VZ demonstration and explain attention span in diagram!
Demonstrate how to reset audiences attention span by writing directly onto working
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11. surface (refer to John Medina and the 10minute-rule).
So, this is the so called „10minute-rule and that means you must do something
emotionally relevant at least every ten minutes to regain audience attention.
Source: John Medina and his book „Brain rules“
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12. Learning styles relate to how you process new information. Knowing your style and
the style of others can improve your communication skills and productivity! There are
a lot of theories out there, but like all things pertaining to the human brain, it’s
complex and there is not only one right answer. What we do know with relative
certainty is that all of us have different preferred ways of learning, and that we like to
combine “styles.” So why not offering different sorts of information to your audience?
Source: Study by Nickerson, RS (1968). A note on long-term recognition memory for
pictorial material. Psychon. Sci 11(2): 58)
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13. The human brain is incredible at remembering pictures. If information is presented
orally, most people can recall about 10% of it three days later. If the information is
presented visually, most people can recall 35%. That is more than 3 times the
retention! The results of combining the two are even more impressive. When
information is simultaneously presented orally and visually, recall shoots up to nearly
65%. (And the most impressing fact is that you even get 63% accuracy a year later.
Again reference to Nickerson)
Source: Study by Nickerson, RS (1968). A note on long-term recognition memory for
pictorial material. Psychon. Sci 11(2): 58)
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14. Eyesight is the body’s primary sensory input. In fact, half of the brain’s resources are
devoted to processing vision. This should come as no surprise. Consider little
children: their eyes light up when they see their mommies’ faces; their eyes widen
when something catches their attention; and they learn to read by looking at picture
books!
And it‘s the same with an adult audience. Props are powerful visual tools as they are
tangible and hit people right between the eyes. What do you think was the reason for
Google to show their first Android Smartphone live during the presentation? Because
seeong is believing!
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15. There are various tools that you can find in meeting and class rooms like
Flipcharts
Whiteboards
Pinboards
And the good old Overhead-projector
The big benefit of having traditional presentation aids is having some sort of
flexibility. Compared to the rather stiff Powerpoint the presenter has the chance to
highlight ideas spontanously, summarize feedback from the audience, etc... And this
helps getting your message across tremendously!
This tools can help to improve the in-room experience, unfortunately this is not a
choice when doing online meetings or classes.
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16. Live interaction, spontaneity, and excitement are often lacking in online classes,
where static presentation of content materials does little to spark the student’s
imagination. Many WolfVision customers have found that their
Visualizers/document cameras successfully introduce a ‘live’ in-classroom
experience into online learning classes, with high resolution imaging quality, and a
flexibility to introduce and explain ideas and concepts in a meaningful and 'easy
to understand' way, which can be difficult to accomplish using inflexible slide
presentations.
How information is treated by the brain is based on previous experiences. If it‘s
already known and expected, most likely the brain will switch to standby mode,
avoiding an information overload. If it‘s new and unexpected you will have the full
attention. The Visualizer can help you achieving this aim and getting your
message across.
With a Visualizer you can easily
Change media => Resets peoples attention span (show diagram in newspaper
instead of slide at the beginning)
Make room for spontaneity in your presentation => Keeps not only people‘s
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17. attention, but also most likely you‘ll get them engaged
You can support your message visually => Creates emotions, you adress the right side
of the brain!
Reduces the cognitive load => Getting rid of text and use visual aids, keeps your
audience vital till the end of your presentation
Start interaction with your audience => Leave long lasting impressions after your
presentation
Books like the „Back of the Napkin“ make a strong recommendation of using sketches
and handdrawing during a presentation to engage the audience (that‘s another
one worth reading).
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18. The USB video device class (also USB video class or UVC) is a USB device class that
describes devices capable of streaming video like webcams,
digital camcorders, transcoders, analog video converters and still-image cameras.
This is not a new standard, our entire product range from the entry level model
vSolution Cam (which is just beside me) to the high-end model VZ-9.4.
The beauty of UVC is the no specific driver is necessary, all necessary parts already
come with the operating system (Windows, Mac or Linux).
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19. That means the only thing you need to do is connecting the Visualizer with your
computer by the USB-cable.
And afterwards you have the flexibility to use the tool of your choice. As long as there
is the support for integrating external cameras into the meeting it‘s simple and
straightforward.
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20. Let’s have a look at Zoom, that’s currently also the solution we’re using for the
webinar.
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22. Teams also offers a similar possibility, but from my point of view it’s a bit more
cumbersome and there are more restrictions compared to what we’ve seen before.
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24. Recorded with Panopto, done as a live event and distributed also for a later review for
the kids.
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25. Before and after
Open Broadcaster Software and distributed on YouTube
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26. Live meetings with their partners and customers.
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27. Using a Visualiser can increase the impact of YOUR presentation and
improve the understanding and retention of YOUR audience!
A Visualizer helps avoiding an overload of information for the audience. It‘s easy to
reset the audience‘s attention by changing media and maintaining interest.
Besides of that it will help creating emotions and engaging with people. All that
can be done spontaniously and without compromising the quality of your
presentation, no matter if this is in a meeting room or an online meeting or for
distance learning.
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28. Confucius said: 'I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand’.
As we’re all limited right now giving the audience the chance of offering a physical
meeting and getting the maximum output of meeting time, we should at least strive
to maximize the online experience, no matter if this is for business reasons or
education. And this means a strong recommendation of doing presentations which
are rich of visuals like pictures or live content from a Visualizer.
As you have seen the Visualizer is really easy to integrate into popular solutions like
Zoom, Teams, … and changing media can be done simple and straightforward!
So let’s make online meetings great again!;-)
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29. If you’re looking for additional food for thought, I’ve a couple of recommendations for
you at the end.
My colleague Simon wrote an inspiring article on LinkedIn which will give you specific
advise about improving remote learning!
On my LinkedIn-profile you can find presentation content and guidelines about
improving presentations in general.
And on the WolfVision YouTube Channel you can find a lot of video tutorials on how
you maximize the usage of your WolfVision products, no matter if this is a Visualizer,
Cynap or our software tools.
Check it out!
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