My stomach dropped to the floor while my eyebrows arched in gobsmacked amazement. The facilitator had just assigned each of us an animal.
We were to close our eyes, and find our fellow animals by making the animal noise,
“Get me outta here!” my brain screamed, while my feet refused to obey.
I was worried about how this would be received by the multicultural mix in the group. I was also focused on my trauma-informed lens, envisioning hands poking others’ body parts that should not be touched by a stranger (remember our eyes were closed).
Interactive? Technically yes.
Engaging, heck yes, but in all the wrong ways.
Fast forward to today.
Think about the last time you gave or took a workshop. Can you think of an example that was either painfully dull or surprisingly interactive and engaging?
In your experience, what’s the difference between interaction and engagement?
To me, interaction is people doing something, while engagement is people being mentally/emotionally invested.
But what does that even mean and why are they so important in learning?
We know that interaction and engagement are both really important for learning, not just sinking in, but being remembered and actually used.
Engagement and interaction are both critical to get the learning to leave the room, a.k.a. be used and applied.
I am approaching 40 years of designing and delivering workshops for more than 50,000 people in more than 150 countries. Here’s what I’ve learned about interaction and engagement.
But first, remember:
- Interaction is what participants do.
- Engagement is how participants feel and think.
Here are six myths of so-called engagement that I often see:
| Six myths of engagement | What that means |
| Interaction = engagement | Interaction can lead to engagement, but not always. Refer back to my disastrous animal sound-making example above. |
| Entertainment = engagement | Sure, learning can be fun, but when entertainment is the only focus, it edges out learning |
| Engagement = a question-and-answer session | This is the mistake I most often see. “We’re going to have an interactive workshop” is code for there’ll be some (usually very limited) time for questions. For the love of everything, learning, leaving five minutes at the end of a workshop for a rushed Q&A session does not engagement make. |
| If some participants like the activities, that’s good enough | Using engaging activities that only some participants can relate to is just plain wrong. Instead, I use my LCD or lowest common denominator technique – if an exercise is at risk of not working for one person in the room, then I don’t use it. It’s got to work for everyone, otherwise it’s exclusive. |
| Using some tech tools = interactive | Polling tools and apps can help, but without meaningful design, they’re just bells and whistles. |
| More activities = more engagement. | Busy doesn’t equal engagement. Engagement is about depth, not just motion. |
Now that we know what engagement and interaction are and the six related myths, let’s move on.
What does engagement and interaction look like?
A quiet room with everyone concentrating, reflecting, in deep thought
A noisy, boisterous room, with everyone participating in a group challenge with lots of oohs and ahhs of discovery
Participants asking questions
Participants answering questions, offering their experience, and resources
Participants assisting each other
Notice the variety.
Which one do you think is more important – interaction or engagement?
Both interaction and engagement are essential.
You can have interaction without engagement (people going through the motions), or engagement without interaction (people mentally interested but sitting passively). When you combine the two, learning sticks — and travels outside the workshop walls.
Some practical ways to foster both:
- Connect content to real-life challenges participants face.
- Use storytelling to create emotional hooks.
- Build in reflection time so learners process meaning, not just information.
- Invite learners to contribute, not just consume.
- Design with inclusion in mind — so everyone can be part of it.
- Ensure learning activities are related to the overall learning purpose.
- Follow up the workshop with ways learners can continue to engage.
When you hit the sweet spot where learners are both doing and invested, that’s when the magic happens — and the learning doesn’t just stay in the room, it transforms what happens outside of it.
Now go on and learn, laugh, and lead
Learn
- The next time you’re planning or attending a workshop, ask yourself: Is this designed for interaction, engagement, or both?
Laugh
- Sometimes, how one engagement starts off can be very different from how it ends.
Lead
- For more information, listen to the Hidden Brain podcast called “How our Brains Learn,” hosted by Shankar Vedantam, interviewing Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
P.S.
- Speaking of engagement, grab your spot now for the October 16th Learning and Development Roundtable How to make learning (and pretty much everything else) inclusive and, even better, invite a colleague and/or friend.
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