12 Interactive Presentation Software for Audience Engagement
When you create a presentation, you want your audience to be engaged, to learn something new, to get excited, etc. But in the era of smart toasters and mobile phones in watches (wristphones), traditional linear PowerPoint presentations have lost almost all of their effect. Luckily, progress isn’t just about making once innovative things old-fashioned, it is also (and rather) about development. In the case of presentations, the development is interactivity.
What Is an Interactive Presentation?
An interactive presentation is one that has some content objects you can interact with: hotspots, navigation, pop-up boxes, etc. This feature helps grab the audience’s attention and boost learner engagement.
We’ve collected the 12 best tools that’ll let you make your presentations interactive. Choose the one that works best for you and take your student learning experience to the next level.
Comparison Chart
1. iSpring Suite Max: “Fast Authoring Toolkit”
Rating: 4.7/5–319 reviews (G2 Crowd)
iSpring Suite Max is an interactive presentation software that lets you design engaging courses alone or in a team, quickly and easily. It works as a PowerPoint add-in that provides tons of robust options. To make your presentation interactive, you can add dialogue simulations, quizzes, screencasts, and video lectures. You can use an existing PowerPoint presentation as a starting point and enhance it with iSpring tools or build one from scratch.
To make your learning content even more visually engaging, you can create interactions. There is a set of ready-made templates that can present your content as a FAQ, timeline, cyclic process, catalog, and many more. To save time and effort, you can use Content Library, with its more than 69,000 eLearning assets such as backgrounds, characters, and icons.
iSpring Suite also has an online space for teamwork and collaboration called iSpring Space. With this, users can build simple courses and quizzes directly in a browser, and work with colleagues on eLearning content in the cloud. Just send a course link to your colleagues, and they’ll be able to edit texts and polish the appearance of the course.
Usage
Even if you don’t get along with computers, you’ll find iSpring Suite easy to use. Just install the program, open it, and you’ll see the iSpring Suite tab on the ribbon of the PowerPoint interface. From there, you can access all the features of the software, and you won’t have to leave PowerPoint to use one or another feature. For example, unlike some other tools, you can record a screencast and synchronize it with the slides — all in one program.
iSpring Space is also extremely intuitive. All you need to do to start designing content with its tools is create an account.
Output
The courses you build with iSpring Suite Max will work on any platform: desktop, laptop, tablet, and mobile. You can either publish your presentation in HTML5, or upload it to any LMS because iSpring Suite supports all eLearning standards: SCORM 1.2/2004, cmi5, xAPI, and AICC.
The courses you design with iSpring Space can be published to an LMS too. This web-based authoring tool supports SCORM and xAPI.
Great for
iSpring Suite is the best interactive presentation software for small and medium businesses that need to create versatile learning content. It is especially great for creators who prefer teamwork. Schools and universities might also find this tool ideal, as there are many features that make the studying process extremely engaging and effective.
2. Nearpod: “Empowering Teachers, Inspiring Students”
Rating: 4.6/5–85 reviews (G2 Crowd)
Nearpod is designed specifically for the educational sphere. With this software, teachers can build online lessons, share them with students, and monitor their results. There are some really nice unique features like the ability to insert assessments into a video and thereby save the flow of the presentation, or Zoom integrity — you can combine your interactive presentation with an ongoing Zoom lesson, boosting student engagement and the effectiveness of the educational process overall.
Usage
Create your educational content, then log in to the Nearpod website, upload it there, and add interactive activities such as polls, memory tests, embed videos, or quizzes. You can share your ready-made presentation with your students by sending them an access code via email, shortlink, or social media.
Output
Interactive presentations for classroom, distance, and hybrid lessons.
Great for
Nearpod is the best interactive presentation software for schools, especially for distance learning.
3. Prezi: “The Most Dynamic and Engaging Presentations Ever”
Rating: 4.2/5–4,879 reviews (G2 Crowd)
Prezi is one of the best tools for making engaging lively presentations. Prezi Present lets you design animated content and present over video. With Prezi Design, you can create all kinds of graphics, animate objects, filter images, and, overall, edit your presentation the way you like.
Usage
You can create your presentation from a blank canvas, or use pre-designed templates from a library. If you have some ready-made PowerPoint slides, you can import those as well. When you’ve finished editing your presentation with Prezi, you can convert it into video format and use it during your speech or a webinar on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and others.
Output
Web-ready dynamic presentations.
Great for
Prezi is the best interactive presentation software for businesses that have a creative approach. Prezi might also be handy for marketing and sales teams as it lets you track who views the presentation and what most interests them.
4. Mentimeter: “Everybody is Heard”
Rating: 4.5/5–39 reviews (G2 Crowd)
Mentimeter is another tool for creating interactive presentations. With this software, you can add quizzes and real-time voting to gather data, and add images and GIFs to make your presentation engaging.
Usage
Mentimeter is a cloud-based tool, meaning all you need to do to start working with it is sign up. Create presentations using templates and themes, quizzes with 13 question types, and insert images and GIFs from integrated free stock images and GIF libraries. Once your presentation is ready, just share a link with your audience.
Output
Well-designed interactive online presentations with real-time response data and its analysis.
Great for
Mentimeter is one of the best interactive presentation tools for gathering feedback-based statistics at companies, schools, and universities.
5. ClassFlow: “Teaching With a Modern Touch”
Rating: 4/5–9 reviews (Common Sense)
ClassFlow is a free cloud-based lesson delivery software that lets you design interactive presentations and gauge your students’ progress. ClassFlow is useful for both in-person and distance learning.
Usage
To start building lessons, designing tests, and managing your classes, you need to create an account. Once you do this, all the features, such as interactive widgets, tests, flashcards, and more become available. You can use them to create your interactive presentation and then share it with your students.
Output
In-class, online, or hybrid presentations that provide real-time statistics and can include a reward badge system.
Great for
ClassFlow is the best interactive presentation software for schools and universities that can’t afford a big budget but are eager to enhance their classes and keep their students engaged.
6. SlideDog: “Freedom to Present”
Rating: 4/5–13 reviews (G2 Crowd)
SlideDog is an interactive presentation tool with which you can combine PowerPoint and Prezi slides, PDF files, videos, web pages, and more, into a single seamless presentation.
Usage
To create a multimedia presentation, the first thing you need to do is drag files into a playlist pane. This will be your playback order. SlideDog doesn’t just let you combine files from other programs but also offers some interactions such as questionnaires or live chat with the audience. You can create them with this software, add them to the playlist, and share your presentation.
Output
Interactive multimedia presentations that include files in their original formats.
Perfect for
SlideDog is the best interactive presentation software for people who organize meetings, conferences, and other events that involve several speakers with individual materials of different formats.
7. FlowVella: “Apple Application Creation Made Easy”
Rating: 4/5–4 reviews (G2 Crowd)
FlowVella is a tool for designing interactive presentations on Apple devices. This software enables you to have a video, an image, text, and more, all together on one slide. FlowVella urges the user to leave traditional linear slides in the past and helps to build an engaging interactive user experience.
Usage
Download the FlowVella app, open it and either start building your presentation from scratch or choose one of the ready-made templates. Easily add files of different formats with a drag-and-drop interface. Once your project is ready, save it on your device. When you need to share the presentation, upload it to the cloud and send its unique URL to your audience.
Output
Interactive online presentations that support smart gestures such as tapping, swiping, and zooming objects.
Great for
FlowVella is one of the best interactive presentation software for exhibitors who need to create content to arrange iPad-based kiosks for events.
8. IntuiFace: “Create Amazing Multi-Touch Applications”
Rating: 4.7/5–23 reviews (Capterra)
Intuiface is a powerful tool that converts all your media into interactive content for mobile devices and multi-touch displays. Being a really complex and multifunctional program, Intuiface is an easy-to-use option for people with any level of coding skills, because it is not you who does all the mathematical job of implementing interactivity in your presentation, but the program itself.
Usage
You can start creating your presentation using pre-built templates, by importing from PowerPoint, or from a blank canvas. Perhaps, it’s better to start with a pre-built template to understand all the basics. Just choose the appropriate template, drag content objects and drop them onto the scene, and try interacting with the project. Once you get to know all the features that Intuiface provides, it will be simple to create presentations using advanced options that can add even more interactivity to your content.
Output
Interactive presentations with media automatically responsive to tap, swipe, and other touchscreen gestures that are available on any device.
Great for
Intuiface is the best interactive presentation software for those who want to create a “wow effect” on a multi-touch screen at exhibitions, conferences, and other events.
9. Visme: “Translate boring data into beautiful visuals”
Rating: 4.6/5–157 reviews (G2 Crowd)
Visme is a cloud-based interactive presentation tool that helps you visualize data, and design infographics, reports, charts, and banners for websites and social media.
Usage
There are a good number of pre-made customizable templates that are divided into 4 categories: Presentations, Infographics, Banner, and Custom project. Choose the appropriate category and select the template you like. Add interactivity by embedding polls, quizzes, videos, and more. The ready-made presentation can be shared via a link, embedded into a website, or downloaded as a picture or a PDF document.
Output
Visually beautiful interactive presentations that don’t require a lot of time and effort to create, and can be shared both online and offline.
Great for
This is one of the best tools for educators, presenters and communicators, especially those who prefer teamwork, as Visme lets you organize the project data into folders and provide role-based permissions.
10. Pear Deck
Rating: 4.4/5–28 reviews (G2 Crowd)
Pear Deck is a tool that helps you create incredibly beautiful and engaging interactive presentations for your students, track their progress in real-time, and let them answer questions anonymously so they won’t be afraid to give an incorrect answer and appear silly.
Usage
Download and then open the add-in for PowerPoint Online or for Google Slides. Create your interactive lesson from a blank canvas, or use one of the templates provided. You can add different assessments, questions with draggable answers, audio, images, videos, and more. Once the presentation is ready, launch it with Pear Deck.
Output
Beautiful interactive presentations that have lots of features to engage your students and to have them feeling safe at your lessons.
Great for
This is the best interactive presentation software for schools, and educators working with children.
11. Genially
Rating: 4.8/5–16 reviews (G2 Crowd)
Genially is an online platform that lets you convert presentations on any topic and for any audience into extremely interactive and animated content.
Usage
Choose one of thousands of templates, or start from a blank canvas. You can fully customize all the templates, add files, add interactivity, and animate objects. The animation in templates is provided automatically, but if you feel like changing it, you can do so freely. When you finish your presentation, you can present it with Genially, or download it in HTML, PDF, and JPEG formats.
Output
Highly interactive and animated presentations that can be embedded to your website, or presented in any way you desire.
Great for
Genially is the best interactive presentation tool for people from different professional areas who want to engage their audience by presenting their content dynamically, beautifully, and in a highly interactive manner.
12. Beautiful.ai
Rating: 4.8/5–78 reviews (G2 Crowd)
Beautiful.ai is an online platform for creating presentations quickly, with minimal effort. Although interactive features are limited to just three, Beautiful.ai’s main advantage is the fact that the designing process itself is interactive: you place an image and the software automatically sets the right width and height, so the entire slide looks beautiful. It makes it extremely easy to create and edit presentations, letting you focus on revising your speech instead of fixing the image size, number of charts, etc.
Usage
Choose the appropriate template and customize it with your images, audio, texts, and other content objects. Try working in a team and see how simple and entertaining it is on this platform. Share your presentation via a link, or export it to PPT.
Output
Effective good-looking presentations that are easy and fun to create.
Great for
This is one of the best software for people who create or edit presentations often and want to spend less time doing that, while maintaining their work at a high level of quality. Beautiful.ai might be too limited for educational purposes, as you are not able to add assessments to your presentations with it, but if you need to pitch or show a strategy, or even teach a lesson without evaluating learners’ progress, Beautiful.ai proves effective.
Final Thoughts
We hope you found this article helpful and discovered at least one interactive presentation software that you can’t wait to try. If you need to create professional-looking courses containing slides, scenarios, screencasts, and assessments without spending time on training, start with an iSpring Suite 30-day trial and explore all of its features right now.
Originally published at https://www.ispringsolutions.com on August 9, 2021.
