A Decade of Success: Revolutionising financial workshops with technology
by Alison Maloney
Over the span of a decade in financial literacy training, Baizat has harnessed the power of Echo360’s polling software, an indispensable tool for facilitating interactive and engaging workshops. The Point Solutions software enables Baizat to conduct real-time polls and effortlessly collect valuable feedback through auto generated reports. It has also eliminated the need for them to carry out time-consuming follow-ups to collect feedback forms, allowing the focus to be on delivering impactful workshops.
Play the video below to hear Consultant, Salah Al-Halyan talking about using Echo360’s polling solutions.
A key element of the workshops is a series of polling questions at the start and conclusion of each session. Commencing with these polls breaks the ice, while revisiting the same questions at the end of the session allows them to gauge students learning progress and shifts in financial perspectives.
Baizat opted to use Echo360’s clickers, affectionately referred to as “keypads” during their workshops, enhancing the inclusivity of their sessions. The clickers serve as a voice for all participants, especially people of determination, whose disabilities may impact their ability to engage in sessions, ensuring that every voice is not only heard but also valued.
Discussing the preference for clickers over personal devices, Al-Halyan emphasises, “The keypads are not a distraction. we always tell people to put their phone away and enjoy the workshops. Take some time from your day and fully engage with the workshop. The keypads work in harmony with this message. We feel (and have seen) that alternatives to (polling) usage such as phones or tablets have a high risk of distracting students from the lesson.”
"By providing real-time engagement and feedback capabilities, Echo360's polling solution has allowed every participant to have a voice even in large auditoriums, and because the software works seamlessly with Powerpoint it allows us to add question slides to our existing decks and modify them with ease."
Al-Halyan adds, “we tried personal device voting on our first session back after covid due to contamination restrictions limiting keypads. We had seniors in the audience, and this created big problems. I spent around 20 minutes (lost workshop time) showing each one how to set it up as they couldn’t follow the instructions, some had very poor eyesight and some had phones with no working internet browser. We were desperate to get the keypads back and ended up agreeing with the client that we could use them in future sessions as long as sanitization wipes were provided before each session!”
Given the diverse and varied backgrounds of workshop participants, Baizat wanted a tool that could quickly connect with the audience and maintain their engagement for extended periods. The use of clickers not only achieves this but also showcases benefits of their workshops.
In this video, Salah Al-Halyan shares a compelling story of how clickers can transform the experience for an initially disengaged participant, underscoring the profound impact of technology in their financial literacy journey.