People almost always struggle with organizing their presentations in a way that will be engaging and informative at the same time. The audience usually gets easily distracted or bored. Let’s admit it, we get very nervous when presenting in front of an audience. Here is what we want to avoid:
- Our voice is not loud enough
- We overuse or don’t use any gestures
- God forbid the projector stops working or
- Someone asks a question we don’t have an answer to, etc.
When people in front us don’t pay attention, we panic because the whole point of a presentation is to make them listen and reflect. Usually, preparing the informative part of the presentation is the easiest one. However, if that part is not interrupted with some activities that will “break the ice”, then the audience will get bored soon enough.
So what to do with the engaging part? Here is what we offer;
5 Interactive games for your presentation
1. The Memory-style game
This game helps your audience to memorize the new concepts that you introduced and to check how well they remembered those concepts at the same time. Prepare a slide on your presentation that has each of the new concepts written on it side by side. Then, write down each of their definitions next to the concepts. Show that slide to your audience once and close it. Ask your audience to break into small groups. The groups will try to match the concepts with their definitions. Whichever group guesses most of the definitions correctly wins!
You can even create several polls and ask your audience to send in the correct choices. Check out Swift, which is a tool for creating real-time polls. It enables its users to see the results of received votes instantly. This way everyone will be able to see the progress of the group and it will add a healthy competition to your game.
2. The Dice game
Pick one of the key points discussed during your presentation and voice it out loud. Then, ask your audience to break into groups and assign each group a number from 1 to 6. Each number represents a different activity. Write on your slide each number’s meaning. For example, 1) tell what it means 2) use it in a sentence 3) give a synonym 4) give an antonym 5) draw it and 6) act it out. Give the groups 5 minutes to come up with their answers and voilà you have a perfect ice-breaker game!
Just some advice, ask the group number 6 to be the first one because acting out a concept is always funny and it will ease the atmosphere in the room.
3. Word Cloud game
This game not only helps to memorize the key points but is also a very good brain activity. After you finish with the presentation of a your key points, give your audience 30 seconds to come up with a group of words that are connected by meaning to those points.
For example:
Let’s say you are giving a presentation about developed countries versus developing countries and you introduce the definitions of each of these concepts. For the game, ask you audience to come up with as many words as possible that are connected with the word “developed”. If I were playing this game, I would say “GDP, population, economy, technology and industrialized”.
4. Sort it out game
Come up with a set of 10 or 20 words. These words can be some concepts discussed during your presentation or completely out of your presentation’s topic. The idea is to sort them in the correct order. You can ask the audience to sort the words alphabetically or by the amount of syllables that they have. The game can be organized on a piece of paper or using Swift, which allows to vote by texting in or voting on web for the correct answers. This is a timed game, so based on the amount of your chosen words set a timer and announce the start. Whoever sorts the words correctly first, wins!
Note, even if a person finishes first but does not get all the words sorted out correctly, he/she is not the winner.
5. Four corners game
If you want to add some “movement” to your presentation here is the perfect game. Name each corner of the room with a letter A, B, C or D. Put a question on your slide and give a letter to each of the answer choices. Then, ask the people in the audience to move to the corner that represents the right answer in their opinion. This is a tricky game because even if the majority goes to a specific corner, that does not necessarily mean it is the right answer.
This game only works for multiple choice or true or false questions. For true or false questions you can use only 2 of the corners.
6. Two truths and a lie
As the title implies, this game is about telling two truths and one lie and letting your audience guess which one of the statements is a lie. You can come up with three statements about a famous movie that everyone has seen.
For example:
- “Pulp Fiction” was the first independent movie to gross over 200 dollars
- The script for the movie was not written by Quentin Tarantino
- The famous dance scene in the movie was not improvised
7. Introductions game
This game helps the audience to open up, learn about the others and introduce themselves.
People in the audience each choose an alphabetic letter. Then, they are given 5 minutes to write down as many words as possible that describe themselves and start with the letter they chose. For example, if a person chooses the letter “E”, he or she might write extraordinary, enthusiastic or energetic and for the letter “C” charismatic and courageous. Duplications of the chosen letters are permitted, so more than one person can choose the same letter.
Here you go! We hope this games will help to make your presentations more engaging and interactive.
