Studying Online;Succeeding through Distance Learning at University

Coping with online presentations 161 
soap opera you watch. Te image changes regularly. First, you see 
a couple of people in a scene together. Ten there is a close up of 
one of them. After that, you are looking over the shoulder of the 
other person. Ten there’s a wide-angle shot of the whole scene. 
Tis constant changing of view is what helps keep us hooked 
and watching. If the shot is shown for too long, the TV com-
panies know that people drift away. Indeed, they have research 
that shows how much attention people are paying at any single 
moment. Tis has helped them understand the importance of 
regular changes in perspective to keep the audience watching. 
For online presentations, you are in a similar situation. If you do 
not keep changing the visuals, your audience will also drift away. 
You know yourself that when you have been watching an online 
presentation, it has happened to you. Don’t go pretending you 
have never checked your emails while you were supposed to be 
watching an online presentation. Tat kind of behaviour happens 
when the online presentation remains static. You want to avoid 
this happening when you are presenting. So, in your preparation, 
make sure you have plenty of visuals that change regularly to 
keep your audience hooked. 
QUICK TIP:You need many more slides and visuals for an online 
presentation than you might include in a face-to-face talk. 
Tere is one other aspect of online presentations that also needs 
consideration: the issue of “cognitive overload”. Tis happens 
when you provide too much information or ask your audience to 
do too many things at once. When planning to present over the 
web, you need to consider this. If you are going to have a slide 
with several bullet points on it and you are asking your audience 
to take part in a poll while looking at the slide, there’s a danger 
that is too much for them to hold in their mind at the same time. 
Tis leads to cognitive overload, and they will either not read 
the slide or not participate in the poll. So, you need to consider 
carefully how you will present your information online. Not only 
is doing things like showing text slides and polls simultaneously 

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