Audience Engagement Techniques in Oral Presentations

Abstract

Public speaking is often conceptualized as a one-way monologue performed by a speaker for a listening audience. This monologic approach faces challenges and limited results as demonstrated by the education literature on active learning. In response to this research, this practitioner article explores the nature and effective execution of five universal Audience Engagement Techniques that provide opportunities for a speaker to turn their passively listening audience into active participants in a dialogue. Practical and theoretical implications of Audience Engagement Techniques generally are also discussed.

Public speaking is often conceptualized as a unilateral exchange led by a speaker. The speaker crafts a speech, commits it to memory or practices its recitation, and delivers it to an audience that passively listens. This conventional approach to delivering speeches presents inherent challenges for audience members, including boredom, distraction, and lack of engagement.

Many fields outside of communication have acknowledged these inherent challenges in their discussions about effective course delivery. They call the monologic approach to public speaking and lecturing the traditional lecture format (Bonwell, 1996; Dorestani, 2005; Hafeez, 2021; Van Horn et al., 2014). This format entails the instructor presenting a monotonous discourse while the students assume passive roles as mere recipients of the information. The traditional lecture format is restrictive in several ways, including the absence of feedback regarding the students’ grasp of the subject matter, diminished student attention, the need for effective public speaking skills, and many more limitations highlighted by Bonwell (1996).

Thus, the education field has responded to this problem through research on active learning. Vanhorn et al. (2019) identified numerous definitions and conceptualizations of active learning. For this exploration, active learning is a set of teaching strategies that transform students from passive recipients of information to active participants. Bonwell and Eison (1991) further support this definition by stating that it “involves students in doing things and thinking about the things they are doing” (p. 19).

A lecturer can deploy several active learning strategies, such as using a think-pair-share, 1-minute papers, formative quizzes, or having students compare notes (Bonwell, 1996). Active learning and traditional lecturing are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Mallin (2017) proposed the “interactive lecture” that suggests moments of traditional lecturing mixed with active learning strategies throughout the class period.

Studies support the efficacy of active learning. In a meta-analysis comparing 104 studies on learning achievements between active instruction and traditional lecturing in humanities and social sciences, Kozantis and Nenciovici (2022) found student performance on assessment scores to be higher under active instruction, with effect sizes varying across subject matter. In a similar meta-analysis of 225 studies on STEM courses, Freeman et al. (2014) found that average student test scores increased by 6% in an active learning environment and that students in traditional lecture environments were 1.5 times more likely to fail. While the “active ingredient” for its success across multiple studies and fields could be many, one common theme to active learning is the increased listening and co-performing obligations by all attending students. This approach activates the students to construct to new understandings and interact with the instructor, which addresses the three levels of learning activities suggested by Chi (2009).

All public speaking conveys some information for the audience to remember. Similarly, education conveys material for a student to remember. While the active learning literature seeks to improve public speaking for teaching purposes, the more abstract practice of engaging the audience by turning them from passive listeners to active participants can improve public speaking for many more purposes outside of education. There are opportunities for speakers in a ceremonial speech, research talk, team meeting, and many other contexts to engage their audience in this way.

However, current mainstream public speaking textbooks lack instruction about these strategies and how to implement them (Fraleigh & Tuman, 2019; Gamble & Gamble, 2020; Lucas, 2019). The National Communication Association’s Competent Speaker Speech Evaluation Form also does not mention audience engagement as a component of an effective speech (Morreale et al., 2007). Instead, it approaches a speech as a monologue. In other words, the NCA and mainstream public speaking textbooks treat public speaking as the traditional lecture format of education research.

It is time for public speaking materials to add a new layer to speech delivery that draws on the advantages of an active audience rather than a passive one. I will introduce five universal Audience Engagement Techniques (AETs) to begin that discussion. AETs are tools that a speaker can use in a presentation moment to get the audience to respond through prescribed actions to the speaker rather than merely listen.

The exploration of these five techniques will serve two purposes. Practically, public speakers can deploy these techniques in their presentations to actively engage their audience in ways they have not before. On a more theoretical level, these techniques can serve as the foundation for exploring and systematically building theories of audience engagement in public speaking. Far more techniques can be classified and explored in future publications, but this article will be a starting point.

The Five Universal Techniques

There are five universal techniques that I will discuss in this article: Polling, Discussion, Recitation, Imagination, and Reflection. The only two prerequisites for carrying out these techniques are the presence of a speaker and an audience capable of responding. These five AETs require no technology to execute, although they are adaptable to virtual environments. I will introduce each technique and offer tips on effectively executing them.

The Polling Technique

“By a show of hands, how many of you have heard of an audience engagement technique before?” This question is an example of a poll. The speaker asks the audience a general question that all of them can respond to simultaneously.

The Polling Technique engages the audience by getting them to respond en masse to the speaker. Instead of using a rhetorical question with a pause, the speaker can activate the audience by asking them to respond nonverbally.

There are ways to get creative with the polling technique. Instead of asking the audience to raise their hand to a binary question, the speaker can ask the audience to rate something on a scale of 1-5 or 1-10 by holding up their fingers. Instead of hands and arms, the speaker can also poll using other body parts. I had a student who delivered a speech on mental health who asked, “By a show of smiles, how many of you are feeling good today?” A speaker can also ask an audience to stand up if they answer “yes” to a first-part question and then ask those standing to sit down if they answer “no” to the second part. If the room and audience size permits, a speaker can also ask the audience to vote with their feet by asking them to move to one designated area of the room if something applies to them.

In addition to body parts, the speaker can ask the audience to raise or use an object that they have or were given by the speaker before the speech began. One student who delivered a speech on cell phone usage asked the audience to raise their cell phones to a question. More technologically advanced polling can involve using Kahoot! where participants can use their phones to show polling results on the projector in real time (Wang & Tahir, 2020).

Polling Technique Tips

For the polling technique to be successful, the speaker must ask a pollable question, allow the audience enough time to respond, and respond to the poll results.

First, the question must be pollable by being close ended with mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive options. Asking the audience to raise their hands implies a question for a binary answer. Thus, asking for a show of hands on an open-ended or ternary question would not make sense. The question should also be simple and not involve complex conditional statements.

Second, when the speaker deploys a poll question, they must allow enough time for the audience to respond. A common mistake is when the speaker poses the question, gets scared of the silence, and immediately moves on to the rest of the speech without giving the audience a chance to respond fully. In that case, the audience perceives the poll question as rhetorical. For a poll question to be successful, the speaker must be willing to pause long enough to yield results.

Third, the speaker must respond to the poll results. Otherwise, the poll comes across as ingenuine. The speaker should respond by panning the room and visually acknowledging the votes. The speaker must therefore prepare for three scenarios when deploying a poll: when all, some, and none of the audience answers positively to the question. All three scenarios call for some acknowledgment of the result and a transition to the rest of the speech.

For example, suppose everyone raises their hand to hear of AETs before. In that case, the speaker should acknowledge the audience’s general familiarity with the term and transition that response into the rest of the speech. The speaker might say, “Since most of you have heard of an Audience Engagement Technique, I want to review some basic concepts as a refresher and help you discover techniques you may not have heard before.” The speaker should also prepare for scenarios where no one raises their hand and when some audience members do.

A poll can immediately follow another poll question. It can also generate a Discussion question, which I will explore next.

Discussion Question

“Since none of you have heard of an Audience Engagement Technique before, let me ask you this, what makes a speech ‘engaging’?” This statement is an example of a Discussion Question. Educators and trainers often use this AET, asking the audience to converse about a common question and respond to the speaker and each other.

Discussion Tips

Facilitating discussion questions in an educational setting is a skillset (Dallimore et al., 2004). Finn and Schrodt (2016) developed five factors for measuring a teacher’s discussion facilitation skills: provoking questions that stimulate debate, organizing the discussion to keep it on topic, asking a variety of questions, affirming student contributions, and correcting students to help them understand. To expand on these findings for broader public speaking purposes, I suggest that the speaker must ask a discussable question, allow enough time, and relate the discussion outcomes to the speech.

First, the speaker must ask a discussable question. The discussion question can misfire if it has an implied answer or one that is too obvious to instigate any debate. If the question is worded confusingly, the audience might react with stares or looks of confusion.

Second, the speaker must allow enough time for an actual discussion. Initially, the speaker must be willing to pause after posing the question to allow the audience to ponder and answer the question. Once the first audience member responds, the speaker must allow enough time for subsequent responses. Each audience member’s response can vary unpredictably in length. The unpredictability of the discussion’s length and topical direction are common and understandable reasons why some speakers avoid discussion questions in timed speech scenarios.

Third, like the Polling Technique, the speaker needs to acknowledge the key ideas from the discussion and tie them to the rest of the speech. The discussion should move the content and ideas of the speech forward. If the speaker poses a discussion question and moves on without relating the critical ideas to the speech, the discussion comes across as a formality or throw-away.

Discussion Questions are a practical technique to get multiple audience members involved in the presentation and to converse directly with the speaker. The Audience Recitation technique is helpful if a speaker wants all audience members to speak.

Audience Recitation Technique

“So, fellow audience members, repeat after me: ‘Engage . . . your . . . Audience.’” The Audience Recitation Technique requires all audience members to recite a phrase or word together. Places of worship often have congregations recite whole prayers in unison; public speakers can train their audiences to recite phrases and ideas taught earlier in the speech.

The speaker either directly or indirectly trains the audience to respond with the proper recitation or the “frequent phrase.” Directly, the speaker can instruct the audience to respond a certain way, as demonstrated in the example at the beginning of this section. The speaker will tell the audience what to say, cue them to start, and say it with the audience if needed.

Indirectly, the speaker can “imprint” the phrase into the audience if it is said often enough throughout the speech for them to remember. If the speaker starts the speech with the phrase and uses it throughout the main points, they could nonverbally cue the audience’s turn in the conclusion. Repetition is the requirement.

Recitation Tips

There are a few conditions for this technique to work. First, the phrase must be recitable. The phrase must be brief for the audience to state in unison. The longer the phrase, the more opportunities for audience members to get out of sync or find the exercise too intimidating. Keep the phrase to no more than seven words.

Second, the point where the speaker wants the audience to recite the phrase must be clear. If the speaker uses the direct training approach for creating the recitation, then there is a clear point for the audience to start and finish. The indirect training approach requires finesse. The speaker must tell the audience that it is time to recite that frequent phrase. Typically, this can be done through a long pause that signals the statement coming or a hand gesture indicating it is the audience’s turn to speak.

The Audience Recitation Technique is a quick and immersive way to ensure that the audience remembers a critical point and keeps them active. If there is not a frequent phrase that works for the speech, then imagination exercises can be a way to transport the audience into other immersive dimensions.

Imagination Exercises

“Imagine that you are giving a speech to a group of undergraduates who are uninterested in your topic. You get blank stares, students doing things on their cell phones, and a few falling asleep. You must do something to win back their attention, so you decide to deploy an AET.”

The above paragraph is an example of the Imagination exercise. The speakers put the audience in a hypothetical scenario through vivid descriptions. The goal of the vivid description is to create a mental video in the audience’s mind that immerses them in the situation that the speaker is introducing. It can help the audience empathize by causing them to “live” the situation. Optionally, they can ask the audience to close their eyes to help them focus.

Imagination Tips

For Imagination exercises to work, the speaker must provide direct instruction by commanding the audience to pause and imagine the words spoken to them. The command will grab their attention, invite them to go beyond merely listening to the words, and to imagine them as vividly as possible. Asking the audience to close their eyes adds another layer of activity that can make the exercise more engaging. If their eyes are closed, they must be told when to open them. I had a student who forgot to tell the audience when to open their eyes, so many audience members kept them shut while the speaker moved on to the first main point of the speech. Over time, the audience members opened their eyes, but it was awkward for them, nonetheless.

It is also important to use vivid descriptions. A student of mine used the imagination exercise in her speech about why a future pet owner should adopt instead of shop for one. In summary, she asked the students to imagine living in a crate smaller than a bathtub that they could not leave. She asked how it would make them feel if they could not do the things they love. She then tied the exercise to the experience of a pet in a store. It was powerful because she was descriptive, and she prompted students to specifically think about the psychological costs of being contained. It would have been less impactful if she had just said, “Imagine living in a cage all day,” and moved on to tying it to pets.

Lastly, the second-person perspective works best for these exercises. The “you” perspective calls for the participant to be the main actor of the story. While it can be used in the third person, “Imagine seeing someone who. . .” the second person calls for a more empathetic response by seeing action through their own eyes.

Imagination exercises are effective attention-grabbers because they immediately immerse the audience into thinking vividly about the topic by putting them in a hypothetical scenario. If the hypothetical scenario is too difficult to imagine, the speaker may use Reflection exercises to call upon the audience’s past instead.

Reflection Exercises

“Reflect on a time when you gave a speech to a bored audience. What signs did the audience give you? How did it make you feel? What did you do to counteract the boredom?” While Imagination exercises are used for hypothetical scenarios, Reflection exercises are used for lived scenarios. The speaker can ask the audience to reflect on a past situation related to the speech topic. For example, the speaker can ask the audience to reflect on a situation when they delivered a speech to a bored audience. When the audience is asked to reflect, the speaker can prompt them with specific questions that make the reflection more vivid.

Reflection exercises enable the audience to relate directly to the topic by imagining an applicable situation in their own lives. They are helpful at the beginning of undergraduate lectures to create common ground and personal significance with the topic.

Reflection Tips

For Reflection exercises to work, the speaker must select a relatable prompt, provide enough time to reflect, and prompt the audience to think concretely.

First, the speaker should choose a topic that resonates with the audience. If the chosen topic does not directly connect with the audience, the speaker should find a comparable situation to which the audience is more likely to understand and relate. After completing this exercise, the speaker should link the analogous situation to the original topic they wish to discuss.

Second, the speaker should provide enough time to reflect. Reflection exercises work best when the audience has enough time to recall an experience. Depending on how relatable your question is, the audience might need 30 seconds to remember a fitting situation. Going through this step too fast will prevent the audience from relating and possibly backfire by convincing them that this topic is unrelatable.

Lastly, the speaker should prompt the audience to think descriptively. Like the imagination exercises, the audience should recall the experience as vividly as possible to maximize its emotional impact or to tie it to the speech’s main argument. The speaker should use follow-up questions that magnify descriptive elements.

Reflection exercises are another way to prompt the audience to relate to the topic. Like the Imagination Exercise, they can serve as attention-grabbers in the speech introduction and within the main points. The speaker can enhance the Imagination and Reflection exercises by putting them in a Think-Pair-Square-Share sequence.

Think-Pair-Square-Share

“Think about an audience engagement technique you think is missing in this paper. . . . Now pair with a partner next to you to share your ideas. . . . Now pair with another pairing to share your ideas. . . . Now who wants to share their idea with the group?”

The Think-Pair-Square-Share (TPSS) technique instigates audience engagement by sequentially increasing their interaction with other people. It has been found to be an effective classroom teaching technique for improving critical thinking and oral communication skills (Kaddoura, 2013; Raba, 2017).

The first step is to ask the audience to think for themselves. This step can involve imagination, reflection, solving a problem, or answering a question. Once the audience has thought to themselves, the speaker asks the audience to pair with a neighbor to exchange thoughts. After a minute or two, the pairings are asked to square by partnering with another pairing to discuss their answers further. Once a few minutes have passed, the speaker asks the audience members to share any answers with the entire group for general discussion.

The TPSS technique does not have to be done in its entirety to be effective. For example, the audience can just think, pair, and share. It is possible to skip the share step if the audience might perceive the prompt as too personal to share in a large group.

TPSS Tips

For this technique to work, the speaker must do the following allow enough time, provide timing guidelines, and orchestrate the room arrangement.

First, the speaker must allow enough time. The TPSS can easily range from 5 minutes up to an hour, depending on the speech goal and the timing of each sequence. In a workshop context, the facilitator might want a long TPSS sequence. On the other hand, the speaker might use a 2-minute sequence in a short speech context. For the shorter context, the speaker might have to do quick thinking, short pairing, and skip squaring to go straight to the sharing. The TPSS is not recommended for speeches lasting 2 minutes or less.

Second, the speaker must provide timing guidelines. While there must be enough time to execute the minimum steps of TPSS, the main risk to this sequence is for it to go too long. The speaker should let the audience know how much time they have for each step so they can execute accordingly. Watching the clock and giving a warning when time is close to expiring is essential.

Third, the speaker must orchestrate the room arrangement. TPSS can be done in almost any room arrangement, be it a classroom, workshop room, or auditorium. The speaker might have to instruct the audience to move, turn around, and rearrange the seating to complete each step. For example, in an auditorium setting where seats are not movable, they might instruct the pairings to pair with two people in the row behind them. Sometimes an audience member may be sitting far away from the rest of the audience. In that case, the speaker can politely invite the isolated member to move closer to another pairing audience member. Speakers will have to make judgment calls about whether this would embarrass the isolated member, and if not, to execute this step gracefully.

The TPSS technique can help audience members break their shyness through incremental social interaction, especially when the group is unfamiliar with each other or are generally shy. This incremental increase also incites broader group discussion because it allows members hesitant to share their ideas to first receive social validation from just one person. Once they receive validation from one in the Pair phase, they can share it with three to receive more in the Square phase. When it is time for Share, the member may have more confidence to raise their hand, or a fellow pairing partner might share the member’s idea on their behalf.

Three AET Principles

Now that we have explored six techniques, there are three general principles to note about AETs: they are stackable, they can be used at any point in a speech, and they all require a degree of surrender.

First, a speaker can do multiple AETs in succession, called stacking. For example, the speaker can start by using a poll to get the audience to answer “yes” or “no” to a question. Once they acknowledge the results, they can generate a discussion question that prompts the audience members to expound on their answers. Once the discussion reaches saturation, the speaker can ask the audience to imagine a situation where they might have changed their answer and to pair with a partner to discuss it interpersonally. The combinations are endless for stacking AETs.

Second, a speaker can deploy AETs at any point in a speech. They can work as an attention-grabber at the beginning of the speech because they immediately communicate to the audience that the speaker wants them involved and active. Hooking the audience in the introduction is a great way to grab attention.

However, the speaker must also seek to maintain the audience’s attention throughout the speech. Thankfully, AETs can also work throughout the speech’s main points. At the end of the first main point, the speaker might ask the audience to do a reflection exercise or generate discussion questions to check for the audience’s understanding. Deploying an AET or any attention-grabbing device throughout the main points is a captivator.

AETs also work in the speech’s conclusion as a clincher to close the presentation. The speaker might use the Audience Recitation technique to end the speech by teaching a repetitive phrase that the audience calls back. If the speaker is giving a persuasive speech, they might take a poll in the introduction asking if they use a particular product and then close the speech by rerunning the Poll, asking if they will now use that product. While they may be risky in execution, both techniques are examples of AETs as clinchers.

Lastly, all AETs require a willingness to temporarily give up some control of the speech situation to allow the audience to respond effectively. Posing an open-ended discussion question, for example, can lead to a wide range of responses. Some responses may be predictable; others may not be. The speaker must be savvy enough to handle the unpredictable responses for such an open-ended technique. A more close-ended technique like the Poll is more predictable since there will be limited responses. If the Poll is a yes/no question, the speaker must simply prepare for a situation where the majority answers “yes” and where the majority answers “no.” If the speaker relies heavily on a script, it will need conditional elements to account for each majority response if they deploy the Poll. If the speaker chooses a more extemporaneous mode of delivery, they need to have the plan in their head.

Overall, AETs can be stacked, used at any point in a speech, and require some planning and impromptu capabilities. Knowing these principles can help speakers decide how and when to deploy which techniques for their intended goals.

Theoretical and Practical Application

This exploration of AETs has implications on both a theoretical and practical level. Theoretically, speeches do not have to be seen as extended turns of a talk by a speaker: a monologue. When an audience member claims that a speech was “engaging,” they might be referring to how the speaker uses attention-grabbing devices like a famous quote, analogy, or humor. The audience member might also be referring to how the speaker used AETs to turn the member from a passive listening recipient to an actively responding conversant. AETs offer moments for the speech to shift from a monologue to a dialogue.

When our understanding of a speech shifts from a monologic script that a speaker recites to more of a conversation conducted with a large group of people, we can begin to introduce new ways of conceptualizing the writing and analysis of a speech. It might be liberating for speakers to think of a speech as a conversation with a large group of people, rather than a script that must be performed perfectly as suggested by the neurocommunicology of public speaking (Keaten & Kelly, 2004). Conversational and discussion facilitation techniques become more relevant to public speaking, bridging education practices and findings that have not been directly applied to public speaking for noninstructional purposes (Dallimore et al., 2004; Finn & Schrodt, 2016).

Also, on a theoretical level, AETs expand the techniques applied in the active learning literature. Many of the techniques taught as active learning techniques can be contextualized as AETs, and many AETs can be contextualized as active learning techniques. While it is outside of the scope of this practitioner article to explore all the details of these two bridges, this article can be an inspiration to cross them, explore the commonalities, and report the findings in future publications.

Practically, instructors, trainers, and coaches can challenge their students, clients, and themselves to ask, “How can I get my audience involved?” as they craft a speech. As a reader of this article, how will you get your audience involved as you write your next lecture or workshop? Will you ask them to do a reflection technique to relate to the material? Or will you conduct a Poll to decide whether they would predict Hypothesis A or Hypothesis B is correct? No longer are we just “talking about” our topics to passive listeners; instead, we are immersing our audiences into visual and kinesthetic conversations with a fellow interlocutor.

Conclusion

There are more than five AETs in the public speaking universe. In this article, I explored five techniques to start a conversation and provide greater depth on how to deploy them. None of these five techniques require any technology to execute. All the speaker needs is their voice and an audience. Future studies can identify and explain more AETs and how they work. Through our own scholarly and practitioner dialogues about AETs, we can turn all our speeches from monologues to dialogues.