There’s something special about live presentations, talks and lectures. An event with a speaker and an audience creates a sense of social presence and accountability. Synchronous presentations are temporary physical or online spaces that promote engagement in a topic via shared momentum and interaction.
At UTS, we can engage with a wide variety of synchronous presentations that bring audiences together around shared interests in learning and teaching. From the speeches at the 2024 Learning and Teaching Forum, to the guest presenters in the Learning Design Meetup and recent lightning talks during Open Education Week 2025, these in person, online and hybrid gatherings offer opportunities to connect and learn from experts.
Making these events inclusive is key to their success. We should ensure our presentations, including logistics, technology, resources, and delivery, are accessible and minimise physical and communicative barriers to participation. This requires careful planning and implementation to support all audience members to engage, regardless of ability. Steps may include providing captions and transcripts for audio-visual content, using slides with high colour contrast and clear fonts, and verbally describing visuals like images and diagrams.
The mental tightrope of live presenting
For presenters and facilitators, balancing these needs in a live presentation can feel like performing acrobatics. There is often little time to prepare in the run up to an event, and limited opportunity to test the session technology. Then during the session, presenters might need to monitor a live chat, interact verbally with attendees and keep to schedule. All of this while meeting the audience’s accessibility requirements.
The result can be cognitive, sensory and emotional overload for the presenter. Overloaded presenters can feel overwhelmed and anxious to finish and are less effective at creating an inclusive environment.
Set yourself up to manage complexity
How do effective and inclusive presenters balance all these factors? Here are 3 suggestions based on my observation of colleagues and students. What other approaches could you add to this list?
1. Reuse and repurpose to lighten the mental load
Avoid designing from scratch; use ready-made tools and scaffolds to free up time for other prep.
- Use an inclusive practices checklist for efficient preparation. This resource on facilitating inclusive synchronous presentations includes a handy slide template
- Share checklists and templates with guest presenters to support them to use inclusive practices
- Script image and diagram explanations with generative AI tools and paste the text into your slide notes
- Choose Zoom for automatic recording, captions and transcription to support the audience and create (almost) ready-made resources
If you have tools and scaffolds to share, materials can be leveraged into Open Educational Resources (OER). Take a look at OER Checklist: Design and sharing considerations for guidelines.
2. Tap into peer support
Share the logistical load to free up your cognitive space before and during the presentation.
- Recruit co-facilitators as early as possible in the event planning and delegate responsibilities to them
- Ask for volunteers for event preparation (e.g. calendar invitations) or assistance during the presentation (e.g. managing Q&A)
- Appoint an accessibility champion to oversee and implement inclusive practices before and during the presentation
Bringing co-facilitators onboard generates reciprocal benefit. In exchange for providing logistical support, volunteers gain a unique learning opportunity. This in turn could be a gateway to a new field of learning, and a project credit for their practical experience.
3. Plan for flexibility and embrace the unpredictable
Shift your mindset from rigid delivery to responsive facilitation to reduce the pressure to be perfect and open up space to connect with the audience.
- Plan in contingency for adjusting your presentation in the moment. A brief pause might benefit everyone – including you! – or you might decide to skip or simplify content to match the audience’s pace
- Reduce ambiguity by checking in explicitly with attendees
- Refocus the session away from yourself by incorporating simple, low-effort activities like reflection questions
Seeking and using participant feedback as part of your flexible approach helps you adapt meaningfully in the moment and in future presentations, ensuring all participants feel recognised, valued and included.
Blog post feature image: We Shine Together by Ana Filipa dos Santos Lopes is licensed CC BY-NC-SA.