Use and abuse
PowerPoint was the first piece of
popular, learning, presentation ‘software’, in the IT sense (writing and the
alphabet are software in a wider sense). Few pieces of software have
simultaneously been so used and abused. Most teachers, instructors, trainers
and lecturers use it or something similar, yet most learners have frequently
experienced its misuse. It has been a victim of its own success in that most of
its users know little about its proper use in relation to learning, and as it
is so easy to create content, they overload their slides and learners’ brains.
A little known fact is that
PowerPoint was originally designed for the Mac. The company was later bought by
Microsoft and ported for use. Launched as part of Microsoft Office in 1990, it
was easy to learn, required no training (few to this day go on a PowerPoint
course) and had lots of whizzy features for spicing up presentations. Later
versions allowed media objects to be easily shown and PowerPoint decks are now
commonly used in webcasts or made available on the web through Slideshare.
Death by…
Every technology needs user
skills and there is perhaps no piece of teaching technology so easy to abuse
than PowerPoint. There’s even an Anti-Powerpoint Party that gives awards for bad PowerPoint slides.
Witness the well known phrase ‘death by PowerPoint’.
In a sense PowerPoint is so easy
to use that it tips into overuse. There is a tendency to take existing print
content and translate that to the screen and literally machine gun the audience
to death with innumerable bullet points.
The problem of excessive text
comes from a deep adherence to print culture in education and training. Few
teachers, trainers or lecturers have an understanding on how to use the
different media of text, images, audio and video in learning. Media mix skills
are thin on the ground. The default, therefore, is text and lots of it. This
leads to cognitive overload, cognitive dissonance, a mismatch of media to
learning objectives and excessive cognitive noise. Watch this for some fun.
Cognitive
overload
Sixty slides of dense text and
bullet points will lose the attention of even the most interested audience, yet
text heavy slides remain the norm. A failure to chunk the information into a
small number of points or cut the text down to actual bullet points and not
full sentences and paragraphs is a common failure. Even then, text on screen
distracts the learner from the speaker. If you are talking, then the leaner’s
attention has to be on what you say, not what you’ve written.
Cognitive
dissonance
To read out text that is already
on the slides is criminal, unless it is for comic effect or occasional emphasis.
Our audio and visual channels are different and if the audience is reading lots
of text on the screen, they are not listening to the speaker. Too much text is
therefore counterproductive. Reading out the same text as appears on the screen
doesn’t help as we read much faster than we speak, so the audience is likely to
be bored by this approach. The see-sawing between speaker’s voice and dense
text is destructive.
Cognitive
noise
PowerPoint allows you to have
fancy fonts, clashing colour schemes that make text difficult to read, too many
fonts confuse and unnecessary animation adds little. Less is more in PowerPoint
as learning requires, attention, meaning, chunking and simple cues for
retention. Noise is a distraction.
Does
PowerPoint over-simplify?
However, there is also the danger
of the over-simplification of knowledge and processes. Tuft in his book The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint describes how NASA adopted
a ‘pitch culture’ even for highly technical issues and that this partly caused
the fatal flight of the Columbia Space Shuttle. The military, for example, have
been criticised for relying too much on PowerPoint for briefings, at the
expense of context. Some senior military personnel have banned PowerPoint for
this reason.
Powerprop
PowerPoint can easily become a
substitute for considered teaching. A deck of slides rather than truly
considered content and genuine communication with students is all too common.
As a teaching aid, it can support bad teaching.
It has also been suggested that
PowerPoint encourages too many people with poor presentation and teaching skills
to present and that it acts as a false prop, replacing the necessary
communication skills needed to get messages across. Those fearful of speaking
and engaging with a large audience can delegate responsibility to their slides.
I gave a TEDx talk last year and the speaker advice was crisp.
· Do not rely on Powerpoint
· No long lists of bullet points
· No podium or lectern
· Don't read your talk
· Enter from audience
· Reveal something never seen before
· Give examples. Tell stories
· Connect with people's emotions
· Controversy energizes!
Quite simply, they’re here to experience your talk not your PowerPoint.
Conclusion
PowerPoint has undoubted
benefits, when used well. When used badly it can be detrimental, even
disastrous to teaching and communication. In the end it perpetuates the
tradition of teacher technology that promotes straight presentation from blackboards,
overhead projectors and other lecture type tools.
4 comments:
Thank you so much Mr. Clark for great insight-as a teacher/instructional coach, I see many often use Powerpoint to bullet point important readings that should be analyzed and discussed. The medium is a great tool as long as it doesn't replace critical thinking in the classroom.
Julie Adams, effectiveteachingpd.com
Enjoying these 50 very much. If you don't know it then a *must read* is the essay entitled the Cognitive style of powerpoint by Edward Tufte Worth going to this link just to see the poster of Stalinist ranks of slides marching mast.
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint
Enjoying these 50 very much. If you don't know it then a *must read* is the essay entitled the Cognitive style of powerpoint by Edward Tufte Worth going to this link just to see the poster of Stalinist ranks of slides marching mast.
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint
Donald, putting PowerPoint in the hands of a bad presenter is awful; using PowerPoint without the presenter is worse.
PowerPoint is the most popular authoring eLearning system of all time. "Rapid Development" often means posting PowerPoint slides and calling them courses. Many a training department "saves money" by stuffing their curriculum with junk PowerPoint presentations no one will ever look at.
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