Midcourse Corrections

Hybrid meetings and blended event experiences are the buzz of many organizations this year. 

But, are they as important as some say or is it just hype? (Get ready, this is a long post. Stay with me, it’s has some interesting research though!)

Along with the buzz, you’ve probably also heard several reasons not to integrate virtual experiences into your face-to-face meeting. Here are some of the naysayer’s mantras:

• Adding live streaming or virtual attendance will cannibalize our onsite attendance.
• Virtual experiences do not promote networking and learning.
• It costs too much to add a virtual element to our annual conference.
• There are too many distractions for people attending virtual events.
• You can’t control the audience when they attend virtually and therefore the value drops.
• Virtual attendees start chatting with each other and don’t pay attention to the presenter. It’s just like they’re passing notes.
• The back channel is rude and disrespectful, and promoting it is a fail. It can be highjacked by spammers and inappropriate talk.

Whether it’s hype, buzz, concerns or complaints, here are four reasons, from recent studies, that show the positive impact on learning by adding virtual experiences to your face-to-face meeting or events.

Online learning of polylogues creates hyper time and increased learning.

1. A 2009 Department of Education study shows that adults in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. (Holy Kaw Batman. That can’t be true!)
   • Giving virtual attendees control of their interactions with each other, the media and the content enhances learning. (That’s right, go ahead and lose control of your attendees. They’ll learn more without you in the way!)
   • Online learning is superior to face-to-face instruction. (Wow, the U.S. Department of Education said that!)
   • Source: U.S. Department of Education, Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies
2. Research published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication shows that online a polylogue (multiple people talking with each other simultaneously) is better than a monologue (speaker presentation) or dialogue (turn-taking interactions).
   • In face-to-face presentations, words follow words, paragraphs follow paragraphs, people’s thought patterns follow a single, one-way linear medium—the presenter’s speech–, which discourages flexible, open-ended, multidirectional and multidimensional thought.
   • Face-to-face presentations demand that an attendee follow an authoritarian, straight-line, fixed point of view and the medium can become stronger than its content.
   • Attendee engagement during a face-to-face presentation demands turn-taking interaction, a dialogue, where the process of taking turns may become more important than the message and comments may be out of snyc as a result of waiting for one’s turn. (We’ve all been there where we’re dying to add a comment, ask a question or ask for clarification. By the time we get called on to speak, we’ve forgotten what we were going to say or it’s no longer relevant to the discussion.)
   • Virtual experiences where attendees can control their conversations and participate in polylogues of words and images increase learning and retention. (Ok, here’s the proof that chats, like Twitter chats are better than monologues or dialogues.)
   •  Source: Comparing How Students Collaborate to Learn About the Self and Relationships in a Real-Time Non-Turn-Taking Online and Turn-Taking Face-to-Face Environment
3. Supersynchrony, as Dr. Davis Fougler calls it, allows attendees to control of level of synchrony with parallel interactions, which magnifies learning opportunities and retention.
   • In face-to-face presentations, the majority of the interactions are between the presenters and the attendees, basically one-way and expert centric. Sometimes, presenters involve audience engagement yet conversations are still one-way dialogues between two people.
   • Virtual experiences promote supersynchrony that creates hypertime, bending time so to speak, by allowing for additional data flow to the attendee and increased productivity. (There’s your new word for the week, supersynchrony.)
   • Virtual or online presentations give attendees the ability to break and restore communication linearity. Participants can scroll back from the moment the statements was posted, while interacting presently in the here-and-now, resulting in several conversations happening all at the same time (which are archived for later use).  (I know, go ahead and say that’s too much noise for you and you need to focus on one thing at a time. There’s a time and a place for that too.)
   • Such hyper synchronous, multi-layered online interaction not only connects each participant in a web of discussion, it affords each participant time to respond during the online synchronous discussion and time to reflect and digest what was said in the archives. This increases interactivity, learning, retention and is a better than face-to-face learning. (For all those naysayers about Twitter chats, here’s the research to back it. Just because YOU don’t like it doesn’t mean that it’s that everyone doesn’t like it. Get out of the way and let your attendees interact with the content and each other.)
   • Sources: Building Time Machines: Thinking about the future of interpersonal communication and International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Volume 6, Number 2.
4. Hybrid events, blending virtual and face-to-face actually drive face-to-face event attendance and purchases.
   • In 2009, Cisco Live, Cisco’s annual customer conference, had 10,000 people at their face-to-face event and another 4,400 with virtual experiences.  
   • Along with traditional back channel chats during presentations, Cisco provided live group video chats after keynotes specifically for virtual attendees to ask experts, Cisco executives, and speakers questions and to provide more in-depth discussions.  These tools also allowed smaller groups of virtual attendees to break off into private chats and return to the larger chat as needed.
   • 80% of the virtual attendees said they are likely to purchase a product from Cisco.
   • 34% said they were likely to attend the face-to-face event because of attending the virtual experience. (Who wouldn’t like a 34% increase in face-to-face registration!)
   • They had 21,000 virtual sessions views, 74 blog posts written and 4,000 virtual booth visits.
   • Source:  Once You Go Hybrid You’ll Never Go Back

My takeaways from these studies:

1. Allow attendees to pick their learning preferences. It’s fine if someone wants to use a computer during an event, follow the back channel or just passively listen. Respect all.
2. Event organizers must begin to create more networked learning and less monologues in conferences. Start thinking about adding “social” elements to the face-to-face experience.
3. Event organizers should see events within the larger context of a community ecosystem including virtual and face-to-face experiences.
4. You can’t control learning whether at your face-to-face or virtual event and you never did.
5. Adding a virtual element to your face-to-face event, can have a positive impact on attendance at the next event. See virtual experiences as marketing for future registration, not something that discounts the face-to-face experience. 

So what say you? If you’re still with me and read all of this!