How to make your training interactive with ShowTime.

Susan is a corporate trainer. A very active one too. She conducts at least 2 sessions a week.
Like most trainers, Susan believes that delivering effective training sessions are of paramount importance. Recently however, Susan found her trainees distracted. They were either checking mail or surfing the web on their smartphones. She assumed that the trainees do not find the training content interesting. To ensure her classes were appealing, Susan constantly changed her content to suit her audience. But new content for every session takes a lot of effort and it still failed to deliver results that she expected.

This is when she discovered Zoho ShowTime.


Zoho ShowTime is a training presentation delivery tool that lets you interact with your trainees in real time. ShowTime takes any presentation created using PowerPoint or Zoho Show and puts them on your participant's smartphone as they are being presented. This lets the trainer and the participants connect with each other in real time; even during the session.

Advantages for your participants:
Your participants get a unique experience where they get to voice their opinions without even talking. This makes it easier for even the shy participants to interact. They also can save your slides digitally for future reference.

Advantages for you (Trainer) :
You get more interaction from your participants during and at the end of the session. After class, they can provide valuable feedback that helps to improve your slide content and the way you present your slides in the future. You can provide your contact details on your 'Thank you message' which lets your participants get in touch with you at a later time and date.

What do you need to do?
First, import a presentation into ShowTime. Your slides need to be in one of the formats (.ppt, .pptx, .pdf). Pre-check your slide content, images and videos to see if it works as it is supposed to.

Second, insert polls on slides where ever required so you can use them while you deliver the training. There are 3 kinds of polls to choose from.

•     Multiple choice
•     Rating (rated out of five or ten)
•     Text box.

Finally, when you are ready to deliver your presentation, 'set an audience key' and share it with your participants. Trainees can log into 'attend.zoho.com' or download the ShowTime Viewer app. When they enter the audience key, they will be able to see your slides one-by-one as you present. You can present from a laptop or from your smartphone by moving around the hall instead of being stuck to the podium.

Get your participants to 'like' a slide to appreciate its content, image or video. When you think they are getting bored, you can also initiate interaction by starting a poll. Your participants can vote and as the votes come in choose when to share the results on the big screen.

Request your trainees to raise questions using the ShowTime Viewer app. Choose when to project questions to your participants or archive the rest for later. Once you are done presenting, get real time feedback from your participants. View session analytics to understand insights on what worked and what did not. Get to know what your participants liked the most.

Explore ShowTime for free now and experience all the exciting features. Don't forget to write to us.

Nandini Diagarajan
Technical Writer - Zoho ShowTime

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