A webinar for higher education students is perfect for delivering real responsive teaching. When designed effectively and combined with other learning mediums, a webinar is a much-needed element for student-faculty interaction and an opportunity to accomplish various objectives like setting expectations of an online course, query resolution, and even tying up dispersed learning (of a lesson or topic) holistically.

In this blog, let’s look at how to create a webinar that keeps the higher education students engaged.

Table of Contents:

How to Plan an Effective Webinar for Higher Education Students?

A webinar can and should be an active learning classroom; its purpose is to fulfill the student’s need for direct interaction with the faculty. Here’s how to plan a perfect webinar for higher education students in 2025:

1. Compliment Your Webinar with Pre-reads or Homework

For a student to be engaged, pages of text or an hour-long video are not the best idea. Divide your lesson or topic into varied formats like discussions, collaboration, video and audio clips, hands-on exercises with text, and possibly brief video lectures. We recommend presenting information in 10-minute “chunks.”

2. Understand Your Student’s Learning Needs

Before you prepare any content to present to your students, it is crucial to understand their learning requirements. For that, you can try pre-webinar surveys to get to know your audience’s preferred style of learning, challenges, and expectations.

For example, some STEM students might prefer more technical, data-oriented content, while you might have to try a different approach for arts or humanities students. You can always use Google Forms to gather information well ahead of time, which would help you address the concerns relevant to students.

3. Use Multi-Graphic Content

Your webinar’s success also depends on the content’s relevance and visuals. Using vivid and explanatory illustrations, infographics, and videos helps your student grasp complex ideas more easily. Not keeping the slides too text-heavy and using smart graphics will help your students remember content long after the sessions. Simple tools like Canva or Visme can save your mundane and text-heavy slides.

4. Encourage Active-Participation and Collaboration

One of the best ways to keep your student’s attention is by making them actively participate in the webinar discussions. You can encourage questions and comments throughout the presentation or invite students to discuss their experiences. This interactive session promotes a healthy learning environment and community building.

5. Post-Webinar Engagement and Follow-Up

You can send your students a follow-up email with a recording of the session and additional resources such as related articles, research papers, or case studies that provide similar information on the topics discussed. This strategy ensures that your students continue learning even after the webinar and apply what they’ve learned.

You can also create a discussion forum or group on platforms like Slack or Moodle, where students can clear doubts with you and engage with a broader community of similar interests.

6. Select the Right Webinar Platform

You must choose an efficient execution platform for your webinar to ensure students enjoy a glitch-free webinar experience. Look for platforms that offer multiple features like screen-sharing, breakout rooms, and interactive whiteboards.

Consider factors like:

  • Capacity: You must make sure the platform can handle the student traffic
  • Interaction Tools: The platform must offer interactive features like real-time feedback, chat, Q&A, or hand-raising options
  • Technical Support: In case of technical issues, the platform must offer a service support system

7. Use Your Webinar Time Judiciously

Now think about what you usually use your in-class time for. We’d say you define it at a more goal-oriented level, like presentation of content, checking for understanding, or providing feedback for collaborative project work; this will be more effective than just jotting down lectures, quizzes, and discussions. This mini-reflection should help you decide the agenda for your synchronous means of engagement.

When you have more than a webinar for your lesson or topic, be sure to communicate to students about what they are responsible for doing before the webinar — exercises to be completed, audio-video lectures to be viewed, or contributions in discussion forums.

8. Webinar Tools are Plenty; Take Your Pick

With regards to tools, new and enhanced communication methods, such as Skype, Zoom, FaceTime, Microsoft Team Builder, GoToMeeting, and other virtual meeting tools, are all readily available, at low cost—and they work.

Zoom is one of the most used online video conferencing tools right now. It’s easy to use and the video and audio quality is quite good. It incorporates all the features necessary to conduct meetings, lectures, and presentations.

However, there have been some privacy issues involved with Zoom. Many meetings were leaked onto the web, so if you have to be mindful of data security, think again and choose the platform responsibly.

The GoToWebinar option is great if you would like to track a lecture or presentation. However, the chat feature is not very well designed and could be an inconvenience during group discussions.

Google Meet is Google’s video conferencing app within G-Suite. This option will be especially convenient if you and your audience have and actively use Gmail accounts. This way, there will be no need for any downloads from the web. The easy-to-use interface that is fully integrated with other G Suite apps like Google Calendar allows people to create and drop in and out of meetings quickly, just by clicking a link.

WebEx has a separate section, WebEx for education, where one can find many great materials on each step of creating and managing a virtual classroom.

For complete courses and programs, learning management systems (LMS) such as Canvas, Blackboard, D2L, and Moodle are available. They work well to integrate online functionality into college and university distance and online learning programs.

Also Read: How to Create Personalized Learning Paths for Higher Education Students

How to Conduct the Best Webinar for Higher Education Students and Learners?

In a webinar, you can elaborate on questions that students may have posed on other platforms.

In fact, if your webinar software allows adding quizzes or survey questions, you can ask students to explain their stand, for example, “Why did you choose option A?” Such discussions build engagement and help keep the conversation on track through interactive feedback. Let’s see how you can conduct a proper webinar:

1. A Good Class Size

Let’s start with the basics: 20 to 30 students are the perfect size for an online class. If your group is too large, some students will not ask questions or participate in discussions similar to the traditional lecture halls.

2. Bring Out the Person in You

So your group is connected, and you are ready to begin; before you jump in with your agenda, break the ice. If you are conducting the webinar as the faculty of an online course, engage in some informal conversation with your students every time you meet them virtually— tell them which books you are reading or mention something interesting that happened over the weekend.

Students should know who their teachers are as people. This practice becomes more significant during the pandemic when your students are distanced and new to the virtual medium; share with them your struggles and coping mechanisms.

3. Dual Coding & Concrete Examples

Let’s now move into the core time of your webinar. Whether it’s the presentation of content or a recap-cum-summary class, two tips will definitely ensure high engagement levels—use of multimedia and examples.

Two of the six strategies for effective learning, as given by the Learning scientists, are Dual Coding and Concrete Examples. Dual coding calls out the use of words and visuals; make your slides relevant by using text and images. In your webinar, use specific examples to explain abstract or complex concepts and provide as many examples as possible in your discussion and questions.

4. Keep it Short and Worthy

Time your webinar (more than an hour is a strict no). The limited availability or scarcity of the webinar is one of its greatest strengths.

Scarcity increases the students’ sense of urgency to participate, and they meaningfully participate in the webinar. In social psychology, this influencing power is called the ‘scarcity principle.’ In doing so, you don’t just motivate students to participate in the webinar, but all the activities.

For all the benefits that webinars offer, they are not as good for giving learners control over the content, breaking into parts, or accessibility. However, with the above tips, you can make the most of this medium to improve the online learning journey of your higher education students.

5. Encourage Peer Interaction

Foster a sense of community by allowing students to interact with each other through breakout rooms or group discussions. Also, divide students into small groups during the webinar to discuss specific topics or questions.

This approach not only enhances their learning through peer interaction but also helps them build connections, making the webinar experience more collaborative and dynamic.

6. Provide Follow-Up Resources

After the webinar, share resources such as recorded sessions, slides, and additional reading materials with students. Providing access to these materials helps reinforce key points and allows students to revisit the content at their own pace, deepening their understanding and supporting different learning styles.

Six Steps to Create a Great Webinar

Here are six steps you can follow to create a great webinar:

  1. Class strength should be of 20 to 30 students only
  2. Break the ice with students
  3. Use words + visuals and examples
  4. Limit your webinar time to 60-90 minutes maximum
  5. Use webinar time for meaningful interactions like query resolution, constructive feedback, etc.
  6. Provide exercises, video lectures, and/or text reading, etc. before or after the webinar

Also Read: How to Develop and Deliver Interactive Lessons for Higher Education

Wrapping Up

Creating engaging webinars for higher education students is a powerful way to enhance their online learning experience.

By incorporating pre-webinar activities, using varied multimedia, boosting interactive participation, and selecting the right platform, you can ensure that your sessions are informative, dynamic, and impactful.

At Hurix Digital, we understand the importance of designing effective webinars that support student engagement and promote a meaningful online learning environment.

Our team is committed to helping educators and institutions develop interactive and accessible digital learning experiences. Want to learn more about how we can help? Talk to our team today!