Connect With Your Audience: Add Real-Time Q&A to Google Slides

Imagine you’re giving a presentation at your local WordPress meetup or user experience conference.

You’re excited about your topic, specifically something you discovered in your work, and want to get feedback from audience members.

You ask questions during your presentation, encourage audience members to respond.

But few people respond.

You know not everyone is comfortable answering questions in public. Did you ask the wrong question? Maybe the question you asked isn’t what your audience members want to talk about.

At the end of your presentation, a dozen audience members line up to ask you questions. Hmmm.

You wish everyone in the audience could hear your answers.

What could you have done better?

Introducing Google Slides Q&A

Announced last month, the Q&A feature in Google Slides provides speakers with a better way to encourage audience participation.

Slides Q&A allows audience members to submit questions on their computer or mobile device during a presentation, without interrupting the speaker.

In addition, the audience can view all questions submitted and vote for which questions they want answered.

Speakers get real-time feedback from their presentation, and can view the questions from the device they’re running the presentation on.

Questions can be sorted by which questions received the most votes. Speakers can reply to the questions during the presentation.

Sound good? Is it something you’d like to add to your next presentation? Let’s get started!

How to Add Q&A to Google Slides

To add Q&A to your Slides presentation:

1. Open a presentation
2. At the top of the presentation, look for the Present option, and select the down arrow. On desktop, Present displayed in the upper right corner of the presentation.
3. Select Presenter View
4. A new window will display. Select Audience Tools (if it’s not already selected)
5. Select Start new
6. Your slides will display in your presentation window with the link to submit questions at the top of the screen
7. When you want to stop accepting questions, select the off switch in the Q&A window

Ask a Question

To ask a question during the presentation:

1. Audience members go to the Q&A link provided in the presentation
2. Select Ask a question
3. Type their question

Questions are limited to 300 characters.

A nice feature I can appreciate: audience members can include their name in their question, or ask the question anonymously.

Vote on a Question

To vote:

1. Audience members go to the Q&A link provided in the presentation
2. Select the thumbs up or thumbs down icon to vote

Show Questions to the Audience

Presenters can show questions to the audience by selecting Audience Tools of the Q&A window. Find the question you want to display to the audience and select Present.

When you want to change to another question, find the question and select Present.

Summary

Q&A is a great tool for presenters to get real-time feedback from audience members. No microphones, no need for moderators to gather audience questions.

And it’s an easy way for audience members to participate and ask questions during a presentation.

Will I use it? Yes! I’ve written before about why I like Google Slides: it’s operating system agnostic, provides option to present without being online, and can be run from any computer.

And I’ll be recommending to to the speakers at the Metro Detroit WordPress and Refresh Detroit meetups I organize.