Emphasizing engagement: adapting to the hybrid environment through new interaction technologies : Evaluating Audience Engagement Platforms impact on engagement in hybrid meetings and presentations

Abstract: An increase in distributed workspaces are influencing the way people work and thereby how meetings and presentations are conducted, making hybrid settings the standard for many organizations. Previous research has shown that hybrid settings decrease engagement due to technical issues, lack of inclusiveness, changing social dynamics and difficulties in evaluating participant engagement. Due to the need to diminish the negative effect the hybrid setting has, this study aims to evaluate the effect Audience Engagement Platforms have on increasing and evaluating engagement. The study was conducted by interviewing 31 users and non-users of Audience Engagement Platforms (AEPs) on meeting and presentation engagement, with 6 of them focusing on the hybrid setting. Thereafter a survey was conducted with AEP users on functionalities and effect on social dynamics. The interviewees generally agreed that anonymity and the possibility of presentation interaction were important aspects of the platform. Most hosts traditionally used visual cues as methods of engagement evaluation, and a diverse set of AEP use cases were described for all meeting and presentation types. The survey showed that all evaluated functionalities had a positive impact on engagement, where Wordclouds, Rankings and Quizzes increased perceived engagement the most. Furthermore, voluntary Likes, Reactions, Comments and Q&A from the participants was both perceived to increase engagement and suitable for evaluating participant engagement. In conclusion, the platform was shown to increase engagement both due to its platform characteristics as well as its functionalities. Anonymity was an important characteristic for lowering the barriers to participation and democratizing each input. Also, sharing the same interaction medium between remote and co-located participants helped to create a shared sense of belonging. Highly scored engagement features in the survey, such as Wordclouds and Rankings, can be both moderately low-effort in terms of how active a participant must be to give input on, whilst still directly asking each participant to give their opinion on a subject or statement. The quiz function was rated highly, which some interviewees suggested was due to its competitive nature. During the interviews however, many interviewees put a large emphasis on asking questions on a subject to be an important engagement tool, which would mostly correlate to the open-ended question functionality. The evaluation of engagement was concluded to be mostly helped by the functionalities Likes, Comments and the Q&A, as they are signs of voluntary participation. However, as the actual engagement level may not be correctly interpreted through the usage of these functionalities, it may still be insufficient to do a  correct evaluation.