What is Audience Engagement?
According to a study commissioned by The San Francisco Foundation and Grants for the Arts, audience engagement is defined as a creating and delivering experiences that have an impact on the participants. So why is engagement important? If the participant experiences more of your presentation, rather than daydreaming, thinking about problems, etc, the more engaged they are. Seems like an obvious statement right? So what are some tools we can use to engage with our audience for more productive office meetings and presentations?
ICAP Framework
The ICAP Framework is a perfect toolset for engaging our audiences more in meetings. Educators have long recognized that students learn better the more engaged they are in the learning process. A relatively new hypothesis published by Michelene T. H. Chi & Ruth Wylie proposes a framework to teach you how to engage more with your audience. This framework is titled ICAP.
ICAP, or perhaps more appropriately, I>C>A>P, is an acronym that represents a structure for engaging your audience.
Interactive > (is more engaging than) Constructive > Active > Passive
Interactive activities are more engaging than Constructive activities. Both Interactive and Constructive activities are more engaging than Active activities, and all three are more engaging than Passive activities.
So what are some practical examples of these activities that we can use in our presentations?
Practical Examples
By using the ICAP Framework to generate ideas on how to present important information to your audience in a way that will engage them with the ideas, you will be more efficient in expressing your ideas. When we are more efficient at communicating ideas, our audiences are more receptive to accepting them.
