The most effective technique is requiring frequent low-stakes responses — when participants know they might be asked to share or type something at any moment, they stay present instead of drifting to email.
Why Multitasking Happens
People multitask in virtual workshops because nothing is stopping them. There’s no physical cue that you can see them looking elsewhere. There’s no social pressure from sitting in a room full of people. And if your session is primarily one-directional — you talking, them listening — there’s genuinely nothing that requires their active attention.
Think of it from the participant’s perspective. If 20 minutes can go by without anyone asking them to do anything, their brain is going to fill that time with something more immediately stimulating than passive listening. You are competing with email, Slack, and social media. The only way to win that competition is to make participation mandatory — not through policing, but through design.
How AI Designs for Presence
Ask Claude or ChatGPT to add a response prompt every 8-10 minutes throughout your agenda. These don’t have to be elaborate — a chat prompt (“Type one word for how you’d describe your AI experience so far”), a quick poll question, or a “turn and tell your partner” via breakout. The key is unpredictability. When participants don’t know exactly when the next prompt is coming, they stay ready.
AI can also generate “cold call” style prompts that feel inviting rather than threatening — “Sarah, what stood out to you in that last section?” works if Sarah has been actively participating. If the session has been passive for 20 minutes, it creates anxiety. AI helps you design the participation structure so cold calls feel like a natural extension of an already-engaged group rather than a gotcha moment.
What This Means for Educators
As a trainer or coach, the goal isn’t to prevent people from multitasking through surveillance — cameras-on policies and attendance monitors create resentment. The goal is to make full presence more interesting than whatever else is competing for attention. Frequent, varied, low-stakes response moments accomplish that without any policing at all.
The Simple Rule
Design at least one participant response point every 8-10 minutes. Ask AI to generate a list of quick prompts for your next session — one per segment — and add them to your facilitator notes. When participants know they are an active part of the session, multitasking stops being the path of least resistance.