Great post, I agree, these formats tend to do poorly for me, thanks for writing this down.
One especially poor element in both activities is the absence of slides. I’m a visual learner, and I space out pretty quickly without a visual element (it even happened at a panel I was moderating!)
I find that slides are super useful to force the speakers to have a structure and think about how they are going to present their content. The ‘panel but everybody has a talk at the beginning’ is rather good.
One important element I’ve read, however, is that people remember much better the information if they interact with the content. Our brain remembers best not when we get the information in, but when it goes out (for instance when we explain it and we have to reformulate).
So having a section where people have a quizz, or small 1-1 or group discussions, or a question to answer, gives people the opportunity to absorb and interact with the content.
Great post, I agree, these formats tend to do poorly for me, thanks for writing this down.
One especially poor element in both activities is the absence of slides. I’m a visual learner, and I space out pretty quickly without a visual element (it even happened at a panel I was moderating!)
I find that slides are super useful to force the speakers to have a structure and think about how they are going to present their content. The ‘panel but everybody has a talk at the beginning’ is rather good.
One important element I’ve read, however, is that people remember much better the information if they interact with the content. Our brain remembers best not when we get the information in, but when it goes out (for instance when we explain it and we have to reformulate).
So having a section where people have a quizz, or small 1-1 or group discussions, or a question to answer, gives people the opportunity to absorb and interact with the content.