34 ms·

PowerPointless: Digital slideshows are the scourge of higher education

121 points by tokenadult 13y ago

mnw21cam 13y ago
I cannot vote this up enough. One of the best presentations I have attended was 90 minutes of stock photos. Each one was loosely connected to the next point that was to be made. A couple of weeks ago I made a presentation where absolutely every bit of text said the exact opposite of what I was actually saying to the class. I was half way through the lesson before someone noticed. It got their attention though. Slides are there to stop your class falling asleep, serve as a mind-jogger for yourself, and supply those rare bits of information that absolutely have to be visual, such as a graph or diagram. None of these things need text (except maybe the title).
- Goladus 13y ago
  * I was half way through the lesson before someone noticed.* Were you halfway through before someone noticed or halfway through before someone decided to say something about it?
- kyberias 13y ago
  You didn't provide any arguments or evidence to support your view that text on slides is detrimental to learning. Also, your experiment to make a presentation with opposite slides probably confused a lot of people in the audience before someone "noticed". Nice trick to get their attention but did they learn any better?
- SixSigma 13y ago
  The picture style is my preferred method. I give my audience something prettier than me to look at that doesn't take much concentration, that should be reserved for listening and thinking. I've seen far too many where the slides are for the speaker's benefit: to remind them what to talk about next. You too must have experienced someone turning to the next slide and they have already covered the material on it.
tokenadult 13y ago
For readers who enjoy the general topic of the trade-offs of communicating through PowerPoint, the PowerPoint version of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address[1] by Peter Norvig, LISP hacker who is now Google's director of research, is not to be missed. Another very interesting discussion of PowerPoint you can find for free online is "PowerPoint Does Rocket Science"[2] by data visualization guru Edward Tufte. [1] http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/ http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/ [2] http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001yB http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0... When I give a public presentation, I use a whiteboard and marker, or a blackboard and chalk. If I were in a really large auditorium, I would use an old-fashioned overhead project with blank transparency sheets that I would hand draw on as I speak. I want my talks to be interactive and audience-responsive, not canned. (I do tend to prepare bullet-point outlines with references on a page or two of paper before I give a talk, and email that out afterward, but I say more than I what I write down, and I respond to audience questions.) AFTER EDIT (TO ADD ANOTHER THOUGHT): Just last evening I was at a presentation for parents, at which I was presenting with permanent market on paper pads on an easel, and during discussion a parent mentioned that she has her son open-enrolled in the half-day kindergarten program in my local school district. The kindergarten classes largely use smart boards run by the teacher's computer for instruction, so the little pupils (sixteen in her son's classroom) see a lot of slide shows. The other day, the teacher was telling the class about apples, and rather than bring an actual apple into the classroom, the teacher showed a slide of a stock drawing of an apple. (Apples are available year-round in any grocery store in my town, and cost a lot less than a smart board.) Would you want your children to have this kind of education in early childhood? Wouldn't it produce a deeper understanding of apples and how they grow to touch and cut open an apple while in a school unit about apples? (My school district has a paraprofessional teacher aide in each classroom along with the certified teacher for kindergarten and early elementary classes, so there should be sufficient adults in the room to let pupils touch and see actual apples during class.) This seems like PowerPoint gone mad in primary education.
- mistermcgruff 13y ago
  Here's a reponse to Tufte in defense of PowerPoint, which was on HN a few weeks ago: http://www.john-foreman.com/1/post/2014/01/defending-powerpoint-against-tufte.html http://www.john-foreman.com/1/post/2014/01/defending-powerpo...
Goladus 13y ago
Playing devil's advocate for a moment: A straightforward lecture delivered directly from a powerpoint is not automatically a bad thing. I think students sometimes over-estimate their ability to learn from reading slides and incorrectly assume that simply reading a powerpoint is equivalent to attending a class, even one where the slides are simply read aloud (which, yes, the OP alludes to in a different context). This seems silly, but actually hearing the words may help you understand and more importantly-- remember. I can't tell you how many times where my recollection of some important concept came back to me in a verbal manner, sometimes in the teacher's voice with the same inflection and cadence. (For a simple example from high school, alluded to in the slate piece: "the tangent is the opposite over adjacent." After hearing the teacher say that half a dozen times, I can't think "tangent is adjacent over opposite" without feeling is wrong.) Obviously, if 100% of a class period is spent simply reciting bullet points from a slideshow, that may indicate a problem in the design of the course. But it's not unreasonable for some percentage of time to be devoted to lecture, however unoriginal the visual aides for the lecture might be. When I was in school, professors diligently copied notes from their own notebook onto the blackboard or overhead projector. It wasn't a huge difference really. And yes there's a difference between students giving presentations and teachers giving presentations. Students see the presentation as the goal, the work that's going to get graded, something they have to do. Professors give lectures routinely as part of a lengthy course of instruction. Those are totally different scenarios and it doesn't make you a hypocrite to use slides while advising students to avoid them.
- keithpeter 13y ago
  http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire I'm betting you have a higher score on the auditory dimension than the general population. Others may have a different 'centre of gravity' in their preferred sensory modes. Teachers should try to cater for all as far as possible (the sensory modes are not mutually exclusive)
- Perseids 13y ago
  > A straightforward lecture delivered directly from a powerpoint is not automatically a bad thing. It might not be bad in itself and if you do it right it can be as good or better than a presentation without the material that is read aloud. But at the same time you are wasting the potential of a presentation that is solely meant to help the attendee/listener along and to drive home the important points or even to just use it as a rhetoric device. As an extreme example, look at this presentation: http://youtu.be/taaEzHI9xyY http://youtu.be/taaEzHI9xyY [1]. Most of the time his slides do not even contain a summary of what he talks about but just the headline or the punchline. And I find his style very refreshing. If you really want to have stuff that you want your listeners to be able to work through at home, something which contains all important aspects, then just publish lecture notes online.[2] [1] He begins his talk with some more conversational stuff but later on (skip to 18:30) he also features more technical stuff, and there his presentation is more interesting for our discussion. [2] I see myself making this point the third time in the discussion of the article and I'm somewhat surprised that it's not completely obvious.
I_am_Doge 13y ago
Great article, but after reading the slides, it seems like the problem isn't the medium but how it's used. In business contexts PowerPoint is going nowhere, so I spend a lot of time thinking about how to effectively use my presentation slides, rather than decrying the fact that I have to use PowerPoint. The latter is an interesting discussion by itself, but there haven't been many usable solid alternatives that industry has adopted widely enough to warrant use.
joelgrus 13y ago
Please, let's return to the golden age of when I was in college and professors had to write things illegibly on the chalkboard before just reading them to us!
- Perseids 13y ago
  In mathematics that is still the preferred method, because (latex beamer) slides have far to little space to capture all the stuff you want to view in parallel to e.g. understand a proof. Additionally it forces the lecturer to slow down the information flow, which is equally important in mathematics. In less complex subjects I would prefer slides and well written lecture notes. What Rebecca Schuman is criticising are slides that are simultaneously abused as lecture notes.
dsugarman 13y ago
I disagree, having slides allowed me to quickly learn all the material, much faster than if I was actually attending class. This freed up all my time to get work done and enjoy life in college.
- Perseids 13y ago
  What you would actually want to use in such a case are lecture notes. Or from a different angle, those slides you used have actually degraded into lecture notes and are thus necessarily worse as presentation material.
- yeukhon 13y ago
  Only works if slides don't omit important details or you are re-visiting the slides after having prior knowledge. Some ppts are more like visual aids (outlining important points in a few words) yet doesn't provide any detail. I enjoy both slides and audio. They compensate each other, provided that you have an articulate speaker... Whenever I read slides with proofs I rather have an audio stepping through the entire proof. Staring at proof or some data flow diagram doesn't convey enough to me.
ericHosick 13y ago
Some things to think about: Students are often given the digital slides which they use to study off of for finals. The act of writing/taking notes does help some in knowledge retention. Note taking doesn't happen when students have access to the slides. But, really, power points aren't the issue with higher education (or education in general). The purpose of classes are to enable learning. This seems to be best done through student involvement. Lecturing really isn't a good way to get students involved.
rjf90 13y ago
People need to understand that there are different types of powerpoint presentations. Here are some of the different types of Powerpoints I have experience with: The Public Speaking: Should be a few words, a picture, a quote...basically what this presentation advocates for. Very minimalist. The focus should be on what the presenter is saying. The Pitch Deck: In my opinion, a startup pitch deck should be very minimalist, but should be enough for someone to understand the pitch. Often investors ask me for pitch decks before a meeting. If there's only 3 words per slide, lots of valuable content might be missed. I still never have more than 3 bullet points per slide. The Consulting Deck: When I worked for a big 3 management consulting firm, we used decks to present all of our information. It was much more technical and in depth, and it needed to stand alone in case a CEO wanted to read the study two years down the line. Many times it would have multiple graphs or infographics, and several bullet points. The top right would have a tracker saying which part of the presentation we were in, and the title would be a tagline which states the takeaway from the slide. This type of deck would never be presented to a large public audience, but rather around a table with a few stakeholders with in-depth subject matter knowledge. Clearly there are different types of powerpoints for different situations. My best professors did notes by hand, rather than try to put everything on a powerpoint. The most important rule that holds true to all Powerpoints, in my humble opinion, is one point/takeaway per slide. Too many people use powerpoints as a crutch rather than a tool, and it gives the slideshow a bad name.
hawkharris 13y ago
Challenge yourself to use fewer than five words on each slide. Couple that with strong visuals and carefully rehearsed speaking — that's the way to teach and present.
acadien 13y ago
Terrible instructors will be terrible in any medium, so the problem isn't with the medium but the instructors. Great slideshow though, lots of insight for those of us that do actually care about how we teach.
codr 13y ago
An interesting point - but I wish the article wasn't a friggin' Powerpoint presentation itself. I assume that is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but still.. is it really necessary?
jimmar 13y ago
I've taught a few college classes. I've experimented with no slides, minimalist slides, and text-heavy slides. Young whippersnappers don't seem to know how to take notes--so going with no slides is tough. Students cannot go back and review the lecture to make sure they understood key points. I'll use this method for teaching skills--e.g. calculating NPV in Excel--but not for introducing terms & definitions. When I've used minimalist slides, I get a bunch of students complaining that there isn't enough detail. I think the lectures are more entertaining and engaging, personally, but for students who want to be able to review the material in preparation for an exam, minimalist slides aren't the best. Think about your average Discovery channel show. The shows are interesting and engaging, but if you had to explain everything to a friend later on, or had to take an exam on the material presented, how would you do? Without watching the whole thing over again, it would be hard to absorb all of the material. I hate delivering the text-heavy slides to classes--I often want to skip over some points based on the flow of the lesson, but the doing so might cause confusion later on. Students will ask if they have to know that stuff for the exam. Anyway, they key takeaway for me is to listen to the students and adjust to what they prefer, but not to ignore well-studied pedagogical best practices.
- frenchy 13y ago
  Have you thought of hand-outs to supplement your lectures?
  - flatline 13y ago
    Oh god, please no hand-outs! Or at least, make them digital if so, students can waste paper on their own dime. One thing I hated as a student was getting reams of paper from a teacher. You can't search them, they are easy to lose, and they clutter up my nice neat notebooks like nothing else. A class syllabus is nice to have a hard-copy of because I would refer to it frequently, but that's about it.
    - nnq 13y ago
      I always loved hand outs, and they seemed the best way ever of complementing a good whiteboard lecture, but rarely had the chance to get them. They were great when provided before the course and had enough blank space on every page, because you could scribble all your notes over them, and make comments with arrows on what was on them, instead of having to take extensive notes on blank pieces of papers or notebooks (hated and never used them because I always liked to be able to reorder pages/sections and be able to more "random access" them). Hand-outs are great for mind-drifting students who are too lazy to take extensive notes but are nevertheless genuinely interested in the subject :)
zcarter 13y ago
Looks like someone there got a hold of Edward Tufte's "The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint" http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint "the popular PowerPoint templates (ready-made designs) usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis."
Houshalter 13y ago
I don't get the points about how it's bad to leak information (putting it on the web, showing things before you say them, giving enough information on the slideshow that you don't need to listen.) I mean these things might be bad for other reasons, but if the students don't show up or pay attention, that's on them. And if you can learn everything from the slideshow alone, well then great, what's the problem?
kyro 13y ago
I've always preferred being taught with a white/chalkboard. Being able to follow the professor's every thought, trying to keep 1 step ahead of them by guessing a solution before it's written out, seeing them make and correct mistakes in realtime, just being witness to that semi-stream of consciousness, has proven to be the most effective way for me to learn. Flipping slide-to-slide and having bucket after bucket of information splashed out on the screen, perfectly planned and coordinated, makes you a spectator more than a participant. And preparing slides ahead of time also results in a professor's tendency to put way more information into a lesson than necessary. This may apply more to science courses than liberal arts, though.
- mnx 13y ago
  This seems very true to me, and also one of the major reasons for the success of khan academy. (another major one being that sal is an amazing teacher)
- japhyr 13y ago
  seeing them make and correct mistakes in realtime I'm a teacher. This is one of the interesting decisions that goes into preparing lessons well. You want to plan well enough that you know what you are going to present, but not so well that it's all rote. Leaving room for yourself to make mistakes in front of students is really good. I tell my students as often as I can, "Professional mathematicians, scientists, and programmers make mistakes all day, every day. They have just trained themselves to expect mistakes, and know how to deal with them when they arise." I also tell students that if they are not making mistakes most days, they are not doing interesting or challenging enough work.
  - beloch 13y ago
    Some of the best profs I've had made mistakes deliberately. Making mistakes allowed them to point out common pitfalls and engage students by challenging them to find their mistakes.
    - b_emery 13y ago
JeremyMorgan 13y ago
I couldn't read this critique of slideshows because the slideshow didn't load. Point taken, sir.
MrQuincle 13y ago
I didn't get it. Can you explain the slides to me in private?
kazagistar 13y ago
I was totally with this presentation until the very end. "Don't put your slides/notes online, or people won't have to attend class, and that would be BAD." No, it would not. Making useless work where none is needed is wrong, so there is no reason to artificially constrain students to being present. If a student is able to learn perfectly from a textbook and notes and other resources, or better yet, a video recording of the lecture, and is able to pass the tests and do the homework to prove they are indeed learning successfully, then there is no problem. If you have to force students to attend lectures for the sole purpose of justifying the existence of your job, then your job should not exist.
- robotresearcher 13y ago
  Instructors try to help students to make good decisions. If you'll grant that coming to class _and_ studying alone is the best possible student strategy, then class policies that encourage that are good. If you doubt that students need help to avoid poor choices, consider how common cheating is, and how much effort we put into making it less rewarding for them. It's a fact that if you put all the class notes online, some students will not come to class, thus you did not do them a favour.
- mnx 13y ago
  I think the bigger point was that your power point should not be a sufficient resource because it means its definitely bad.
- milesskorpen 13y ago
  He tells you that the slides SHOULDN'T stand on their own, because an integral part of a class is, well, the teacher actually teaching. The issue with posting the files online is that some students get the mistaken impression that they do cover all the necessary information in class (they do for many other classes, at least), so it is better to not make the files available than get students _thinking_ they were finding all your material.
  - sitkack 13y ago
    The audience for slides-alone vs slide-accompanying is vastly different. I often see them confused when a presenter has a 12 point font on slide meant for 100 people, or when I download a slide deck and there is a single word slide. Doesn't jive. We need both formats. The medium is the message, if the medium is slides plus presenter, the lecture needs to be recorded. We are at this amazing point in history where the avenues for communication currently outstrip our ability to use them. We should all be finding ways to fill that gap.
nnq 13y ago
Their mention of Prezi (https://prezi.com/ https://prezi.com/) just reminded me of it and of when I tried to convince a bunch of people at a "creative digital media agency" to at least give it a thought, instead of using powerpoint or slides crafted in photoshop and stitched in a pdf. I was amazed to find out that they knew about it but they were like "what?! that thing is totally WRONG" or "it's to unstructured to send any clear message" or "is the epitome of BAD DESIGN" etc. And later heard similar thoughts from business people that tried it, like "yeah, that's even worse than keynote" or "couldn't get anything done with that". So I still wonder: why do lots of business/"creative-business" people find Prezi such a bad idea and some even call it "worse than powerpoint"?! (...to me it seemed like a really big step forward in the presentation world)
- marcoamorales 13y ago
  I'm curious to know why you think it's a really step forward in the presentation world. All I can think of is that stuff moves around the screen all around.
  - nnq 13y ago
    Yeah, most people use it badly, and the default templates are awful, but its zooming-in-out style is excellent for mind/knowledge-map based presentation. You can start with a mind-map and then use it to actually tell a story, and have a glimpse at the mind map as an outline every time you "walk" the map. With links between "map regions" you can also more-easily have a non-linear flow that the speaker can improvise "on the spot" instead of having to follow a linear structure. Yeah, the speaker needs to be a good story teller, not to just go from slide to slide like a mindless robot, but all good story tellers have "maps" in their heads, not "slides", so you have a tool that is much closer to the mental model of the speaker. The "visual detail" of how Prezi can move from slide to slide means a lot to visual thinkers. ...now I guess my answer is that most people doing business presentations just don't think very visually at all, they are mostly "words persons", and instead of a map in their heads, they have a list of bullet points that they need to sell in their heads :(
- ben1040 13y ago
btbuildem 13y ago
I'm sorry. I could not get through that slideshow. The medium killed the message there. Could this not have been presented better with a few paragraphs of text on an otherwise blank page? (seriously.. TL;DR anyone?)
rsobers 13y ago
For the people playing devil's advocate: why should a college lecture be any different than a TED talk or conference presentation?
- aganders3 13y ago
  Because it should present the whole story.
aganders3 13y ago
There are all kinds of considerations that this doesn't take into account. A huge part of presenting involves knowing your audience. For just one example, having text on the slides is very important when you have an audience of mixed language backgrounds.
rossjudson 13y ago
This whole thing strikes me as a tone-deaf whine from someone who wants more attention paid to them in lectures. I've seen exceptional presentations that stand on their own as documents to learn from; these are very valuable. Nobody likes having a presentation read to them. This does not mean that we should make "slideshows" useless to force presenters into a different style. What the presenter says or does is ephemeral; the slideshow document lasts.
cromulent 13y ago
I think this Seth Godin PDF on Powerpoint is very good. "PowerPoint presents an amazing opportunity. You can use the screen to talk emotionally to the audience’s right brain (through their eyes), and your words can go through the audience’s ears to talk to their left brain. That’s what Stephen Spielberg does. It seems to work for him." http://www.sethgodin.com/freeprize/reallybad-1.pdf http://www.sethgodin.com/freeprize/reallybad-1.pdf
cottonseed 13y ago
In fact, part of the ivory tower stands unfelled: I don't think I have ever seen a math lecture or talk using powerpoint.
weinzierl 13y ago
Which Wittgenstein quote is she referring to on slide 24? I searched a few quote sites but didn't find anything that would fit.
fat0wl 13y ago
i ran into trouble in a master's programming for going sans powerpoint for a final presentation. Just dove into code & started showing things, illustrating concepts & showing classes/methods. Needless to say i got a little talking to from my professor about how I should've had a powerpoint even though he got what i was explaining. I received a slightly lower grade than a slew of people who just implemented some common algorithm & made a powerpoint about their wonderful journey (almost a direct analogue of the few paragraphs of the text that drove their ingenious work), even though I had spent all of my time you know... researching & experimenting with a novel algorithm. It was at that point that I realized that even the highest echelons of academia can be a trough of mediocrity & conservatism. being in a society that dictates super-linear patterns of thought/communication is a bummer for people whose minds don't work like that but still produce satisfactory (& often beyond) results
my3681 13y ago
Reminds me of a story... This year my dad, a football coach, lugged an overhead projector with a bucket full of transparencies and visa-vis markers to a football clinic he was asked to speak at. When the younger coaches saw the ancient contraption, word got out on twitter, and my dad was past capacity for his talk. Many of the youngest coaches had never even seen an overhead projector! By the time his talk was over, he had drawn (we might say derived) his ideas right in front of them, adapting to the questions that came his way. Most people said they really enjoyed the more interactive style my father taught in contrast to the stale power points of some other presenters. A great reminder that some people (including me!) learn best when things are derived in front of them with a dynamic teacher.
NAFV_P 13y ago
That slideshow was particularly annoying, more annoying than most slideshows .... On the other hand it got the message across well, in fact better than most slideshows.

121 points by tokenadult 13y ago

I cannot vote this up enough. One of the best presentations I have attended was 90 minutes of stock photos. Each one was loosely connected to the next point that was to be made. A couple of weeks ago I made a presentation where absolutely every bit of text said the exact opposite of what I was actually saying to the class. I was half way through the lesson before someone noticed. It got their attention though. Slides are there to stop your class falling asleep, serve as a mind-jogger for yourself, and supply those rare bits of information that absolutely have to be visual, such as a graph or diagram. None of these things need text (except maybe the title).

Goladus 13y ago
* I was half way through the lesson before someone noticed.* Were you halfway through before someone noticed or halfway through before someone decided to say something about it?
kyberias 13y ago
You didn't provide any arguments or evidence to support your view that text on slides is detrimental to learning. Also, your experiment to make a presentation with opposite slides probably confused a lot of people in the audience before someone "noticed". Nice trick to get their attention but did they learn any better?
SixSigma 13y ago
The picture style is my preferred method. I give my audience something prettier than me to look at that doesn't take much concentration, that should be reserved for listening and thinking. I've seen far too many where the slides are for the speaker's benefit: to remind them what to talk about next. You too must have experienced someone turning to the next slide and they have already covered the material on it.

tokenadult 13y ago

For readers who enjoy the general topic of the trade-offs of communicating through PowerPoint, the PowerPoint version of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address[1] by Peter Norvig, LISP hacker who is now Google's director of research, is not to be missed. Another very interesting discussion of PowerPoint you can find for free online is "PowerPoint Does Rocket Science"[2] by data visualization guru Edward Tufte. [1] http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/ http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/ [2] http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001yB http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0... When I give a public presentation, I use a whiteboard and marker, or a blackboard and chalk. If I were in a really large auditorium, I would use an old-fashioned overhead project with blank transparency sheets that I would hand draw on as I speak. I want my talks to be interactive and audience-responsive, not canned. (I do tend to prepare bullet-point outlines with references on a page or two of paper before I give a talk, and email that out afterward, but I say more than I what I write down, and I respond to audience questions.) AFTER EDIT (TO ADD ANOTHER THOUGHT): Just last evening I was at a presentation for parents, at which I was presenting with permanent market on paper pads on an easel, and during discussion a parent mentioned that she has her son open-enrolled in the half-day kindergarten program in my local school district. The kindergarten classes largely use smart boards run by the teacher's computer for instruction, so the little pupils (sixteen in her son's classroom) see a lot of slide shows. The other day, the teacher was telling the class about apples, and rather than bring an actual apple into the classroom, the teacher showed a slide of a stock drawing of an apple. (Apples are available year-round in any grocery store in my town, and cost a lot less than a smart board.) Would you want your children to have this kind of education in early childhood? Wouldn't it produce a deeper understanding of apples and how they grow to touch and cut open an apple while in a school unit about apples? (My school district has a paraprofessional teacher aide in each classroom along with the certified teacher for kindergarten and early elementary classes, so there should be sufficient adults in the room to let pupils touch and see actual apples during class.) This seems like PowerPoint gone mad in primary education.

mistermcgruff 13y ago
Here's a reponse to Tufte in defense of PowerPoint, which was on HN a few weeks ago: http://www.john-foreman.com/1/post/2014/01/defending-powerpoint-against-tufte.html http://www.john-foreman.com/1/post/2014/01/defending-powerpo...

Goladus 13y ago

Playing devil's advocate for a moment: A straightforward lecture delivered directly from a powerpoint is not automatically a bad thing. I think students sometimes over-estimate their ability to learn from reading slides and incorrectly assume that simply reading a powerpoint is equivalent to attending a class, even one where the slides are simply read aloud (which, yes, the OP alludes to in a different context). This seems silly, but actually hearing the words may help you understand and more importantly-- remember. I can't tell you how many times where my recollection of some important concept came back to me in a verbal manner, sometimes in the teacher's voice with the same inflection and cadence. (For a simple example from high school, alluded to in the slate piece: "the tangent is the opposite over adjacent." After hearing the teacher say that half a dozen times, I can't think "tangent is adjacent over opposite" without feeling is wrong.) Obviously, if 100% of a class period is spent simply reciting bullet points from a slideshow, that may indicate a problem in the design of the course. But it's not unreasonable for some percentage of time to be devoted to lecture, however unoriginal the visual aides for the lecture might be. When I was in school, professors diligently copied notes from their own notebook onto the blackboard or overhead projector. It wasn't a huge difference really. And yes there's a difference between students giving presentations and teachers giving presentations. Students see the presentation as the goal, the work that's going to get graded, something they have to do. Professors give lectures routinely as part of a lengthy course of instruction. Those are totally different scenarios and it doesn't make you a hypocrite to use slides while advising students to avoid them.

keithpeter 13y ago
http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire I'm betting you have a higher score on the auditory dimension than the general population. Others may have a different 'centre of gravity' in their preferred sensory modes. Teachers should try to cater for all as far as possible (the sensory modes are not mutually exclusive)
Perseids 13y ago
> A straightforward lecture delivered directly from a powerpoint is not automatically a bad thing. It might not be bad in itself and if you do it right it can be as good or better than a presentation without the material that is read aloud. But at the same time you are wasting the potential of a presentation that is solely meant to help the attendee/listener along and to drive home the important points or even to just use it as a rhetoric device. As an extreme example, look at this presentation: http://youtu.be/taaEzHI9xyY http://youtu.be/taaEzHI9xyY [1]. Most of the time his slides do not even contain a summary of what he talks about but just the headline or the punchline. And I find his style very refreshing. If you really want to have stuff that you want your listeners to be able to work through at home, something which contains all important aspects, then just publish lecture notes online.[2] [1] He begins his talk with some more conversational stuff but later on (skip to 18:30) he also features more technical stuff, and there his presentation is more interesting for our discussion. [2] I see myself making this point the third time in the discussion of the article and I'm somewhat surprised that it's not completely obvious.

I_am_Doge 13y ago

Great article, but after reading the slides, it seems like the problem isn't the medium but how it's used. In business contexts PowerPoint is going nowhere, so I spend a lot of time thinking about how to effectively use my presentation slides, rather than decrying the fact that I have to use PowerPoint. The latter is an interesting discussion by itself, but there haven't been many usable solid alternatives that industry has adopted widely enough to warrant use.

joelgrus 13y ago

Please, let's return to the golden age of when I was in college and professors had to write things illegibly on the chalkboard before just reading them to us!

Perseids 13y ago
In mathematics that is still the preferred method, because (latex beamer) slides have far to little space to capture all the stuff you want to view in parallel to e.g. understand a proof. Additionally it forces the lecturer to slow down the information flow, which is equally important in mathematics. In less complex subjects I would prefer slides and well written lecture notes. What Rebecca Schuman is criticising are slides that are simultaneously abused as lecture notes.

dsugarman 13y ago

I disagree, having slides allowed me to quickly learn all the material, much faster than if I was actually attending class. This freed up all my time to get work done and enjoy life in college.

Perseids 13y ago
What you would actually want to use in such a case are lecture notes. Or from a different angle, those slides you used have actually degraded into lecture notes and are thus necessarily worse as presentation material.
yeukhon 13y ago
Only works if slides don't omit important details or you are re-visiting the slides after having prior knowledge. Some ppts are more like visual aids (outlining important points in a few words) yet doesn't provide any detail. I enjoy both slides and audio. They compensate each other, provided that you have an articulate speaker... Whenever I read slides with proofs I rather have an audio stepping through the entire proof. Staring at proof or some data flow diagram doesn't convey enough to me.

ericHosick 13y ago

Some things to think about: Students are often given the digital slides which they use to study off of for finals. The act of writing/taking notes does help some in knowledge retention. Note taking doesn't happen when students have access to the slides. But, really, power points aren't the issue with higher education (or education in general). The purpose of classes are to enable learning. This seems to be best done through student involvement. Lecturing really isn't a good way to get students involved.

rjf90 13y ago

People need to understand that there are different types of powerpoint presentations. Here are some of the different types of Powerpoints I have experience with: The Public Speaking: Should be a few words, a picture, a quote...basically what this presentation advocates for. Very minimalist. The focus should be on what the presenter is saying. The Pitch Deck: In my opinion, a startup pitch deck should be very minimalist, but should be enough for someone to understand the pitch. Often investors ask me for pitch decks before a meeting. If there's only 3 words per slide, lots of valuable content might be missed. I still never have more than 3 bullet points per slide. The Consulting Deck: When I worked for a big 3 management consulting firm, we used decks to present all of our information. It was much more technical and in depth, and it needed to stand alone in case a CEO wanted to read the study two years down the line. Many times it would have multiple graphs or infographics, and several bullet points. The top right would have a tracker saying which part of the presentation we were in, and the title would be a tagline which states the takeaway from the slide. This type of deck would never be presented to a large public audience, but rather around a table with a few stakeholders with in-depth subject matter knowledge. Clearly there are different types of powerpoints for different situations. My best professors did notes by hand, rather than try to put everything on a powerpoint. The most important rule that holds true to all Powerpoints, in my humble opinion, is one point/takeaway per slide. Too many people use powerpoints as a crutch rather than a tool, and it gives the slideshow a bad name.

hawkharris 13y ago

Challenge yourself to use fewer than five words on each slide. Couple that with strong visuals and carefully rehearsed speaking — that's the way to teach and present.

acadien 13y ago

Terrible instructors will be terrible in any medium, so the problem isn't with the medium but the instructors. Great slideshow though, lots of insight for those of us that do actually care about how we teach.

codr 13y ago

An interesting point - but I wish the article wasn't a friggin' Powerpoint presentation itself. I assume that is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but still.. is it really necessary?

jimmar 13y ago

I've taught a few college classes. I've experimented with no slides, minimalist slides, and text-heavy slides. Young whippersnappers don't seem to know how to take notes--so going with no slides is tough. Students cannot go back and review the lecture to make sure they understood key points. I'll use this method for teaching skills--e.g. calculating NPV in Excel--but not for introducing terms & definitions. When I've used minimalist slides, I get a bunch of students complaining that there isn't enough detail. I think the lectures are more entertaining and engaging, personally, but for students who want to be able to review the material in preparation for an exam, minimalist slides aren't the best. Think about your average Discovery channel show. The shows are interesting and engaging, but if you had to explain everything to a friend later on, or had to take an exam on the material presented, how would you do? Without watching the whole thing over again, it would be hard to absorb all of the material. I hate delivering the text-heavy slides to classes--I often want to skip over some points based on the flow of the lesson, but the doing so might cause confusion later on. Students will ask if they have to know that stuff for the exam. Anyway, they key takeaway for me is to listen to the students and adjust to what they prefer, but not to ignore well-studied pedagogical best practices.

frenchy 13y ago
Have you thought of hand-outs to supplement your lectures?
- flatline 13y ago
  Oh god, please no hand-outs! Or at least, make them digital if so, students can waste paper on their own dime. One thing I hated as a student was getting reams of paper from a teacher. You can't search them, they are easy to lose, and they clutter up my nice neat notebooks like nothing else. A class syllabus is nice to have a hard-copy of because I would refer to it frequently, but that's about it.
  - nnq 13y ago
    I always loved hand outs, and they seemed the best way ever of complementing a good whiteboard lecture, but rarely had the chance to get them. They were great when provided before the course and had enough blank space on every page, because you could scribble all your notes over them, and make comments with arrows on what was on them, instead of having to take extensive notes on blank pieces of papers or notebooks (hated and never used them because I always liked to be able to reorder pages/sections and be able to more "random access" them). Hand-outs are great for mind-drifting students who are too lazy to take extensive notes but are nevertheless genuinely interested in the subject :)

zcarter 13y ago

Looks like someone there got a hold of Edward Tufte's "The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint" http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint "the popular PowerPoint templates (ready-made designs) usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis."

Houshalter 13y ago

I don't get the points about how it's bad to leak information (putting it on the web, showing things before you say them, giving enough information on the slideshow that you don't need to listen.) I mean these things might be bad for other reasons, but if the students don't show up or pay attention, that's on them. And if you can learn everything from the slideshow alone, well then great, what's the problem?

kyro 13y ago

I've always preferred being taught with a white/chalkboard. Being able to follow the professor's every thought, trying to keep 1 step ahead of them by guessing a solution before it's written out, seeing them make and correct mistakes in realtime, just being witness to that semi-stream of consciousness, has proven to be the most effective way for me to learn. Flipping slide-to-slide and having bucket after bucket of information splashed out on the screen, perfectly planned and coordinated, makes you a spectator more than a participant. And preparing slides ahead of time also results in a professor's tendency to put way more information into a lesson than necessary. This may apply more to science courses than liberal arts, though.

mnx 13y ago
This seems very true to me, and also one of the major reasons for the success of khan academy. (another major one being that sal is an amazing teacher)
japhyr 13y ago
seeing them make and correct mistakes in realtime I'm a teacher. This is one of the interesting decisions that goes into preparing lessons well. You want to plan well enough that you know what you are going to present, but not so well that it's all rote. Leaving room for yourself to make mistakes in front of students is really good. I tell my students as often as I can, "Professional mathematicians, scientists, and programmers make mistakes all day, every day. They have just trained themselves to expect mistakes, and know how to deal with them when they arise." I also tell students that if they are not making mistakes most days, they are not doing interesting or challenging enough work.
- beloch 13y ago
  Some of the best profs I've had made mistakes deliberately. Making mistakes allowed them to point out common pitfalls and engage students by challenging them to find their mistakes.
  - b_emery 13y ago

JeremyMorgan 13y ago

I couldn't read this critique of slideshows because the slideshow didn't load. Point taken, sir.

MrQuincle 13y ago

I didn't get it. Can you explain the slides to me in private?

kazagistar 13y ago

I was totally with this presentation until the very end. "Don't put your slides/notes online, or people won't have to attend class, and that would be BAD." No, it would not. Making useless work where none is needed is wrong, so there is no reason to artificially constrain students to being present. If a student is able to learn perfectly from a textbook and notes and other resources, or better yet, a video recording of the lecture, and is able to pass the tests and do the homework to prove they are indeed learning successfully, then there is no problem. If you have to force students to attend lectures for the sole purpose of justifying the existence of your job, then your job should not exist.

robotresearcher 13y ago
Instructors try to help students to make good decisions. If you'll grant that coming to class _and_ studying alone is the best possible student strategy, then class policies that encourage that are good. If you doubt that students need help to avoid poor choices, consider how common cheating is, and how much effort we put into making it less rewarding for them. It's a fact that if you put all the class notes online, some students will not come to class, thus you did not do them a favour.
mnx 13y ago
I think the bigger point was that your power point should not be a sufficient resource because it means its definitely bad.
milesskorpen 13y ago
He tells you that the slides SHOULDN'T stand on their own, because an integral part of a class is, well, the teacher actually teaching. The issue with posting the files online is that some students get the mistaken impression that they do cover all the necessary information in class (they do for many other classes, at least), so it is better to not make the files available than get students _thinking_ they were finding all your material.
- sitkack 13y ago
  The audience for slides-alone vs slide-accompanying is vastly different. I often see them confused when a presenter has a 12 point font on slide meant for 100 people, or when I download a slide deck and there is a single word slide. Doesn't jive. We need both formats. The medium is the message, if the medium is slides plus presenter, the lecture needs to be recorded. We are at this amazing point in history where the avenues for communication currently outstrip our ability to use them. We should all be finding ways to fill that gap.

nnq 13y ago

Their mention of Prezi (https://prezi.com/ https://prezi.com/) just reminded me of it and of when I tried to convince a bunch of people at a "creative digital media agency" to at least give it a thought, instead of using powerpoint or slides crafted in photoshop and stitched in a pdf. I was amazed to find out that they knew about it but they were like "what?! that thing is totally WRONG" or "it's to unstructured to send any clear message" or "is the epitome of BAD DESIGN" etc. And later heard similar thoughts from business people that tried it, like "yeah, that's even worse than keynote" or "couldn't get anything done with that". So I still wonder: why do lots of business/"creative-business" people find Prezi such a bad idea and some even call it "worse than powerpoint"?! (...to me it seemed like a really big step forward in the presentation world)

marcoamorales 13y ago
I'm curious to know why you think it's a really step forward in the presentation world. All I can think of is that stuff moves around the screen all around.
- nnq 13y ago
  Yeah, most people use it badly, and the default templates are awful, but its zooming-in-out style is excellent for mind/knowledge-map based presentation. You can start with a mind-map and then use it to actually tell a story, and have a glimpse at the mind map as an outline every time you "walk" the map. With links between "map regions" you can also more-easily have a non-linear flow that the speaker can improvise "on the spot" instead of having to follow a linear structure. Yeah, the speaker needs to be a good story teller, not to just go from slide to slide like a mindless robot, but all good story tellers have "maps" in their heads, not "slides", so you have a tool that is much closer to the mental model of the speaker. The "visual detail" of how Prezi can move from slide to slide means a lot to visual thinkers. ...now I guess my answer is that most people doing business presentations just don't think very visually at all, they are mostly "words persons", and instead of a map in their heads, they have a list of bullet points that they need to sell in their heads :(
ben1040 13y ago

btbuildem 13y ago

I'm sorry. I could not get through that slideshow. The medium killed the message there. Could this not have been presented better with a few paragraphs of text on an otherwise blank page? (seriously.. TL;DR anyone?)

rsobers 13y ago

For the people playing devil's advocate: why should a college lecture be any different than a TED talk or conference presentation?

aganders3 13y ago
Because it should present the whole story.

aganders3 13y ago

There are all kinds of considerations that this doesn't take into account. A huge part of presenting involves knowing your audience. For just one example, having text on the slides is very important when you have an audience of mixed language backgrounds.

rossjudson 13y ago

This whole thing strikes me as a tone-deaf whine from someone who wants more attention paid to them in lectures. I've seen exceptional presentations that stand on their own as documents to learn from; these are very valuable. Nobody likes having a presentation read to them. This does not mean that we should make "slideshows" useless to force presenters into a different style. What the presenter says or does is ephemeral; the slideshow document lasts.

cromulent 13y ago

I think this Seth Godin PDF on Powerpoint is very good. "PowerPoint presents an amazing opportunity. You can use the screen to talk emotionally to the audience’s right brain (through their eyes), and your words can go through the audience’s ears to talk to their left brain. That’s what Stephen Spielberg does. It seems to work for him." http://www.sethgodin.com/freeprize/reallybad-1.pdf http://www.sethgodin.com/freeprize/reallybad-1.pdf

cottonseed 13y ago

In fact, part of the ivory tower stands unfelled: I don't think I have ever seen a math lecture or talk using powerpoint.

weinzierl 13y ago

Which Wittgenstein quote is she referring to on slide 24? I searched a few quote sites but didn't find anything that would fit.

fat0wl 13y ago

i ran into trouble in a master's programming for going sans powerpoint for a final presentation. Just dove into code & started showing things, illustrating concepts & showing classes/methods. Needless to say i got a little talking to from my professor about how I should've had a powerpoint even though he got what i was explaining. I received a slightly lower grade than a slew of people who just implemented some common algorithm & made a powerpoint about their wonderful journey (almost a direct analogue of the few paragraphs of the text that drove their ingenious work), even though I had spent all of my time you know... researching & experimenting with a novel algorithm. It was at that point that I realized that even the highest echelons of academia can be a trough of mediocrity & conservatism. being in a society that dictates super-linear patterns of thought/communication is a bummer for people whose minds don't work like that but still produce satisfactory (& often beyond) results

my3681 13y ago

Reminds me of a story... This year my dad, a football coach, lugged an overhead projector with a bucket full of transparencies and visa-vis markers to a football clinic he was asked to speak at. When the younger coaches saw the ancient contraption, word got out on twitter, and my dad was past capacity for his talk. Many of the youngest coaches had never even seen an overhead projector! By the time his talk was over, he had drawn (we might say derived) his ideas right in front of them, adapting to the questions that came his way. Most people said they really enjoyed the more interactive style my father taught in contrast to the stale power points of some other presenters. A great reminder that some people (including me!) learn best when things are derived in front of them with a dynamic teacher.

NAFV_P 13y ago

That slideshow was particularly annoying, more annoying than most slideshows .... On the other hand it got the message across well, in fact better than most slideshows.