Using emoticons to engage participants

Green Checkmark, Red X, and Hand Raise typically are used in response to a direct question. You want to find out if your participants are with you, if they are agreeing with what you're saying, or if they want to communicate directly. If you'd like to get more subtle feedback during this session, you want participants to give feedback at any time, teach them how to use the Emoticons Tool. You can see the Emoticons here represented by a yellow smiley face icon. And Greg, if you expand your Emoticons Palette we'll see it on the Macintosh.

So if you expand the Emoticons Palette you'll see that there are 12 different icons that represent what the participants might be thinking about at that time. They might show applaud to tell you that they think what you just said was funny or they liked the feature that they just saw, they might show that they are satisfied, or coffee cup might mean that they feel like they need to take a break. You'll see these other emoticons are very subtle differences. Maybe they feel sleepy or they feel surprised or they feel like there's something to be worried about in that last segment that you just covered.

So participants can let you know their status by changing their emoticons. Again, participants don't typically use these tools unless you invite them to do so. So at this point, I'd like to invite all participants to choose an emoticon that represents how they're feeling right now. Go ahead and click so that we can see those icons show up to the right of your name. So we can see different faces there. And notice that in some cases, you'll see a red exclamation point to the right of the participant's name.

That's not an emoticon that that person chose to use. Instead it's WebEx's way of telling you that that person no longer has the WebEx software interface in the foreground; they maybe moved to email or moved to a Web Browser and they are off doing something else. That red Exclamation Point is your cue that participant is not really paying attention and not with you. If you click the red Exclamation Point in the lower right corner of the Presenter view, you can check the attendee Attentiveness levels and right now I'm seeing that 20% of my attendees, in this case one person, is inattentive.

I don't recommend that you use that information to punish the person or to call on them to make them participate. In my experience that person is just distracted for some reason and in the times that I've tried to call on the person to get them to participate I just get silence, I don't get any response at all because they're distracted and they've maybe stepped away from their desk. So don't feel like you need to make everyone participate; just know that when you see that Red Checkmark, that person isn't really with you, but they may be answering an urgent email.

There are also some tools to the left of the Emoticon icon that shows Go Faster and Go Slower. That's a participant's way of telling you that they are ready to move on or that they need to take a little bit more time. So participants, if you'd go ahead and change your speed control, we can see the icon show up to the right of your name. Many times I'll ask the participants to show the Coffee Cup icon while they are away on break, so I know that they're stepped away from their desk.

When they come back from the session I ask them to show Green Checkmark to let me know that they've returned to the session and that they are ready to start again. So participants, we're about to take a break. Please show your Coffee Cup icon. When you're back in your seat please show Green Checkmark, and then Green Checkmark to show that you've returned. So this is what it looks like on a PC, and this is what it looks like on a Mac. Again, the presenter can clear all of the feedback icons by clicking on this Eraser Tool or the Clear Feedback Tool.

So, as you can see, even though we are not able to see the participants and read their body language or see eye contact, we can use these feedback tools to communicate effectively during the session.