12 Interactive Presentation Software for Audience Engagement

Q: How can I make my presentation interactive?

Whichever software you use for creating presentations, work on them at the levels of text, visuals, and what learners can do with your presentation (like navigating through slides and triggering certain animations). Don’t overuse texts and make sure to supplement them with pictures, characters, and backgrounds. If possible, put large texts into a script and record a voice-over for your presentation.

Q: How do I make an interactive PowerPoint presentation for eLearning?

A great way to make your presentation interactive and even more engaging is to use triggered animations: a hidden-object game, a jeopardy game, interactive flashcards. It's a basic triggered animation types that you can make in standard PowerPoint.

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?

It’s a presentation that has some content objects that you can interact with: hotspots, navigation, pop-up boxes, animations, etc. This feature helps grab the learners’ attention and keep the audience engaged.

We’ve collected the 12 best presentation software. Choose the one that works best for you and takes your student learning experience to the next level.

Comparison Chart

Software	The output	Great for…	Price
1. iSpring Suite	Interactive online presentations that can be played on any device.	Small and medium businesses, schools, and universities.	$970/year Lifetime lisenceAcademic and Nonprofit Discounts
2. Nearpod	Interactive presentations for classroom, distance, and hybrid lessons.	Schools – especially for distance learning.	Free basic version for classes of up to 40 students. Advanced plans range from $159/year for 75 students per lesson to $397/year for 90 students per lesson.
3. Prezi	Web-ready dynamic presentations.	Businesses with a creative approach.	Pricing plans start at $3/month.
4. Mentimeter	Well-designed interactive online presentations with real-time response data and its analysis.	Gathering feedback-based statistics at companies, schools, and universities.	Free basic version. The advanced plans range from $11/month per user to $24.99/month per user (billed annually).
5. ClassFlow	In-class, online, or hybrid presentations that provide real-time statistics and can include a reward badge system.	Schools and universities that can’t afford a big budget but are eager to enhance their classes and keep their students engaged.	Free.
6. SlideDog	Interactive multimedia presentations that include files in their original formats.	People who organize meetings, conferences, and other events that involve several speakers with individual materials of different formats.	Paid plans range from $19/month to $299/lifetime.
7. FlowVella	Interactive online presentations that support smart gestures such as tapping, swiping, and zooming objects.	Exhibitors who need to create content to arrange iPad-based kiosks for events.	Free trial version for four presentations of up to ten slides. Advanced plans range from $10/month to $20/month, billed annually.
8. IntuiFace	Interactive presentations with media automatically responsive to tap, swipe, and other touch screen gestures, that are available on any device.	Presentation designers who want to create a “wow effect” on a multi-touch screen at exhibitions, conferences, and other events.	Free basic version. Paid plans range from $922 to $2.151 per year per concurrent user, billed annually.
9. Visme	Beautiful interactive presentations that didn’t require a lot of time and effort to create, and can be shared both online and offline.	Educators, presenters and communicators –especially those who prefer team work – as Visme lets you organize the project data into folders and provide role-based permissions.	Free basic version that lets you create up to 5 projects. Individual plans, charged from $12.25 to $24.75 per month.
10. Pear Deck	Beautiful interactive presentations that have lots of features to engage your students and have them feeling comfortable at your lessons.	Schools and educators working with children.	Free basic version. Individual premium plan is $149.99/year.
11. Genially	Highly interactive and animated presentations that can be embedded into your website, or presented in any way you prefer.	People from different professional areas who want to engage their audience by presenting their content dynamically, beautifully, and in a highly interactive way.	Free basic version. Paid plans range from $9.90/month to $39.90/month, billed annually.
12. Beautiful.ai	Effective and attractive presentations that are easy and fun to create.	People who create or edit presentations often and want to spend less time on that task, while keeping their work at a high level.	Free basic version. Paid plans range from $12/month to $40/month, billed annually.

1. iSpring Suite: “A Fast Authoring Toolkit”

Rating: 4.7/5 – 319 reviews (G2 Crowd)

iSpring Suite is an interactive presentation maker that lets you design engaging courses on your own or in a team, quickly and easily. It works as a PowerPoint add-in that provides tons of robust options. To make a truly interactive presentation, you can add role-play simulations, quizzes, screencasts, and video lectures. The tool even allows you to create video presentations by combining slides with a presenter video. 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 timeline, cyclic process, catalog, or FAQ, as well as many other options.

To save time and effort, you can use Content Library, with its more than 89,000 eLearning assets such as backgrounds, icons, and characters, that will help bring creative ideas to life. If none of the characters in the Content Library suit you, don’t worry because you can create your own in a matter of minutes. Choose the hairstyle, clothing, and accessories, set the pose and background, and your unique character is ready to interact with learners.

iSpring Suite also has an online space for teamwork and collaboration called iSpring Space. With this, users can build simple courses and knowledge checks 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 to create an account.

Output

The courses you build with iSpring Suite are viewed in a player with customizable color schemes and work perfectly on any device: 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 choice for small and medium businesses that need to create versatile digital learning content. It is especially great for creators who prefer teamwork and may need extended sharing options. Schools and universities might also find this tool ideal, as there are many features, such as video presentations, that make the studying process extremely engaging and effective.

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How to Create an Interactive Presentation with iSpring Suite

To get started, download the iSpring Suite free trial and install it on your computer. Then, open a presentation you would like to make interactive and go to the new iSpring Suite tab in the PowerPoint ribbon.

We’ll show you three ways to make your presentation more interactive with iSpring Suite and explain each one step by step.

Add an interaction

1. To visualize text content and present it in a smarter way, you can insert interactions. To do that, choose Interaction on the iSpring Suite tab.

2. Click New Interaction in the pop-up window and select from 14 ready-made templates to present steps, timelines, and processes, or create a glossary or a FAQ. Then fill out the template with text and images.

3. Once your interaction is ready, click on Save and Return to Course.

Add a quiz

1. To create an interactive quiz or a survey, select Quiz on the iSpring Suite toolbar.

2. Click on Graded Quiz in a pop-up window if you want to create a knowledge assessment, and choose from 14 quiz templates, including multiple-choice, true or false, sequence, and fill-in-the-blanks.

3. Type in your question and answer options.

To make the question clearer, you can add images, audio, and video to the slide.

4. When the quiz is ready, click Save and Return to Course on the toolbar.

Create an interactive role-play

You can simulate a real-life situation and engage your audience in an interactive role-play. For example, to improve their communication skills, you can illustrate how to behave in a particular conversation.

1. To create a new role-play, first, click the Role-Play button on the toolbar.

2. In a pop-up window, choose New Role-play and then click on the New Scene button.

3. Choose a character and a background from iSpring’s Content Library.

4. Enter the character’s expressions and possible replies. Then, simply connect each reply with a new scene.

You can also add voice-overs to make the conversation more realistic and engaging.

5. When the role-play is complete, click Save and Return to Course on the toolbar.

This is how to make a presentation interactive with iSpring. When you’ve finished the presentation, you can save it in HTML5 format to share it on the Web or as a SCORM file to upload it to any LMS.

2. Nearpod: “Empowering Teachers, Inspiring Students”

Rating: 4.6/5 – 85 reviews (G2 Crowd)

Nearpod is one of the interactive presentation tools available to teachers and the educational sphere. With this software, teachers can build an interactive slideshow for an online lesson, share it with students, and monitor learner results. There are some very nice unique features, such as the ability to insert assessments into a video and thereby save the flow of the presentation or the integration with Zoom. With the latter, you can combine your interactive slideshow with an ongoing Zoom lesson, boosting overall student engagement and the effectiveness of the educational process.