4 ms·

I completely agree with this sentiment. I remember one I was a TA for an introductory graduate medical informatics class, and a couple of the students insisted

by skwb 6y ago

I completely agree with this sentiment. I remember one I was a TA for an introductory graduate medical informatics class, and a couple of the students insisted on trying to make a "PowerPoint" in LibreOffice (presumably because he has Linux installed on his laptop). I specifically told them that I would be grading a non-insignificant on their communication and presentation abilities. But they kept on insisting on using LibreOffice. The content of what they were presenting was so utterly distracted by the poor formatting, I had to specifically mention it in my grading. Frankly, I have never seen an aesthetically pleasing presentation in LibreOffice, and it get into so many conflicts/broken formatting when trying to migrate to PowerPoint. The reality is that if you're going to be interfacing with non-technical people (managers, customers, exec level), they all expect a certain amount of polish that comes from presentations. I'm willing to dunk on MBA types that drop buzzwords all day, but sometime you need to be flexible with regard for what tools you use for your job.

eisa01 6y ago
Uh, LibreOffice and PowerPoint are just tools You can easily create crappy presentations in PowerPoint You were quite unreasonable in my opinion, and failed to communicate why they would need to use PPT I’m saying this as a person with PowerPoint as the second most important tool at my workplace, after Excel
- freehunter 6y ago
  They did mention why: >poor formatting...many conflicts/broken formatting Yes you can create crappy presentations in Powerpoint but when you open those crappy presentations they still look exactly how they did when it was created. That's not always the case with LibreOffice when one of their files is opened in Microsoft Office. When I was in university I had instructors who demanded documents be created in MS Office (which I did not own) and I did those assignments in the library where MS Office is installed on every machine. Basic documents work just fine between LibreOffice and MS Office but the more advanced you get the worse the compatibility is. In your view, how much responsibility does the author have for broken formatting versus the reader? Basically, if I (as a student) submit a document with broken formatting, how do you as an instructor make the determination that it's because of a software error instead of a lazy student? And after you make that determination, how much time do you as an instructor put into fixing the student's broken formatting versus rejecting the document and moving on?
  - washadjeffmad 6y ago
    Things have certainly also changed with the move to subscription models, like O365. Students can now reliably produce MS Office compatible documents in web browsers on any internet-connected computer or mobile device. This is a big shift from just a few years ago where significantly fewer students had the hard drive space, internet, and know-how to download and manage multiple licensed versions or bitnesses of MS Office products. Since professors might require older versions of software that are incompatible with other courses at the school (or simply not be aware of the newer version available to them), there's not much students can do except hope the professor will listen to reason or not grade too harshly on something they might be getting entirely wrong. Poor professoring (or TAing) is a good way to get a chair or dean involved, so it's rare to have things escalate too far, but it's still a big source of stress for students who might hold certain parts of the system in higher esteem than they rightfully deserve.
washadjeffmad 6y ago
That's funny, because we have an organizational policy not to disseminate any materials in ppt/pptx because, as you point out, presentation matters, and you absolutely cannot rely on consistency of appearance with PowerPoint. The heart of it is that PowerPoint is a product, not a standard. Because we can't assume everyone is a Microsoft house, we have to support presentations produced in open standard formats and proprietary ones alike. This is why we invest so heavily into our AV and conference spaces - we don't want to make fools of ourselves and our guests by neglecting simple and costless accommodations.
Tempest1981 6y ago
Could they turn in a PDF, exported from LibreOffice? Or were animation effects a requirement?

by skwb 6y ago

eisa01 6y ago

Uh, LibreOffice and PowerPoint are just tools You can easily create crappy presentations in PowerPoint You were quite unreasonable in my opinion, and failed to communicate why they would need to use PPT I’m saying this as a person with PowerPoint as the second most important tool at my workplace, after Excel

freehunter 6y ago
They did mention why: >poor formatting...many conflicts/broken formatting Yes you can create crappy presentations in Powerpoint but when you open those crappy presentations they still look exactly how they did when it was created. That's not always the case with LibreOffice when one of their files is opened in Microsoft Office. When I was in university I had instructors who demanded documents be created in MS Office (which I did not own) and I did those assignments in the library where MS Office is installed on every machine. Basic documents work just fine between LibreOffice and MS Office but the more advanced you get the worse the compatibility is. In your view, how much responsibility does the author have for broken formatting versus the reader? Basically, if I (as a student) submit a document with broken formatting, how do you as an instructor make the determination that it's because of a software error instead of a lazy student? And after you make that determination, how much time do you as an instructor put into fixing the student's broken formatting versus rejecting the document and moving on?
- washadjeffmad 6y ago
  Things have certainly also changed with the move to subscription models, like O365. Students can now reliably produce MS Office compatible documents in web browsers on any internet-connected computer or mobile device. This is a big shift from just a few years ago where significantly fewer students had the hard drive space, internet, and know-how to download and manage multiple licensed versions or bitnesses of MS Office products. Since professors might require older versions of software that are incompatible with other courses at the school (or simply not be aware of the newer version available to them), there's not much students can do except hope the professor will listen to reason or not grade too harshly on something they might be getting entirely wrong. Poor professoring (or TAing) is a good way to get a chair or dean involved, so it's rare to have things escalate too far, but it's still a big source of stress for students who might hold certain parts of the system in higher esteem than they rightfully deserve.

washadjeffmad 6y ago

That's funny, because we have an organizational policy not to disseminate any materials in ppt/pptx because, as you point out, presentation matters, and you absolutely cannot rely on consistency of appearance with PowerPoint. The heart of it is that PowerPoint is a product, not a standard. Because we can't assume everyone is a Microsoft house, we have to support presentations produced in open standard formats and proprietary ones alike. This is why we invest so heavily into our AV and conference spaces - we don't want to make fools of ourselves and our guests by neglecting simple and costless accommodations.

Tempest1981 6y ago

Could they turn in a PDF, exported from LibreOffice? Or were animation effects a requirement?