ThemeFacilitation & roles
CardCard 37 of 63
Questions5 to explore

Presentations

Workshop instructions & prepared knowledge sharing

Presentations in a remote session are not just content delivery; they are the primary shared visual space the whole group inhabits together.

When you share your screen in an online workshop, your slides or materials become the room. Participants are looking at them at the same size as they are looking at you, often on a screen they share with a dozen other tabs. What you show has to work at that scale and hold attention without a physical environment doing any of the work.

Remote presentations need tighter structure than in-person ones: shorter segments before interaction, clearer visual hierarchy, and more explicit signposting of where the group is and what comes next. A slide deck that works well as a sixty-minute lecture in a room will usually not hold a remote group for more than fifteen minutes without activity built in.

Online, specificallyOnline, your slide or shared screen is the entire visual environment for participants, so it carries both the content and the atmosphere; design it knowing that participants are viewing it at the same scale as your face, not as a backdrop to a room.

In a remote session

The same building block as it plays out online: how experienced facilitators tend to handle it when the room is a screen. Illustrations to react to, not rules to follow.

Shorter, not longer

Break presentations into segments of ten to fifteen minutes maximum, followed by a question, poll, or activity. Remote attention drops faster than in-person, and visible interaction resets it.

Signal where you are

Include a simple agenda or progress indicator in the presentation so participants always know where they are in the session and how much remains. Not knowing is a source of low-level anxiety that saps attention.

Design for a small screen

Assume at least some participants are on a laptop or tablet with the video call sharing the screen with the slides. Font sizes, contrast, and visual simplicity matter more than in a projected room presentation.

Prepare transitions, not just content

Plan how you will hand from a presentation segment to an activity or discussion, including what you will say and what you will ask participants to do. A smooth transition is as important as strong content.

Questions to plan around

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

Are your presentation segments short enough that you are interrupting them with activity before participants' attention drops?
Does your slide design work on a small screen shared with a video call interface?
Does the presentation make clear where participants are in the session and what comes after?
Have you planned how to transition out of each presentation segment into interaction?
Are the most critical visuals or frameworks simple enough to read at a glance, without needing you to explain every element?

What trips people up online

Presentations that worked well projected on a screen in a room often have too much text and too little contrast for a shared screen on a laptop: resize and simplify before repurposing.
Longer presentation blocks feel much longer online than in person, and once participants have opened another tab or turned away from the camera, re-engaging them is hard.
Reading slides aloud verbatim is more noticeable and more deadening online than in a room: participants can read faster than you can speak.