“Sign up for our free webinar!”
Do those six words make you feel excited? Intrigued? Doubtful. You probably feel some combination of bored, burdened and “Blech!” Why? Because like most people, you secretly never want to attend another webinar if you can possibly avoid it.
It’s time to bid farewell to one of 1998’s greatest inventions: the Webinar. When webinars went mainstream in the early 2000’s, everyone loved them. “You mean you don’t have to be in a room with someone to hear and see their presentation live??? Amazing!!!”
Since then, we’ve ditched other turn-of-the-millennium technologies, such as Palm Pilots, MiniDiscs, and Rio MP3 players. Yet the webinar hangs on. Along with other defunct inventions, it’s time to replace the webinar with something better.
The Webinar is dead. Long live the Quiz.
Think back to your high school days. Admit it — you spent a lot of time daydreaming, even in the more interesting classes. Why? Because your teachers spent large chunks of time standing in front of the classroom talking at you. During those times, you were merely a passive participant in your learning who was expected to sit still and sustain focus as content washed over you.
Now, what happened when the teacher announced that it was time to take a quiz? Your brain snapped into action! You quit passing notes, you sat up straight, your pulse quickened and you focused. You knew you were about to be challenged, and therefore you became both cognitively and emotionally engaged. You suddenly had become an active participant in your learning.
You’ve seen quizzes all over social media. Why? Online quizzes are what I call Cognitive Catnip; people engage with them at remarkably high rates, often spending several minutes in each quiz, then sharing with colleagues and friends. Quizzes fit the ‘on-your-own-time, bite-sized’ ethos of social media, and are thus very audience-friendly (unlike webinars.) Most quizzes are simply designed to generate clicks, pageviews and ad impressions but can do much more.
