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Attack of the PowerPoint-Wielding Professors
theodp writes "A CS student blogger named Carolyn offers an interesting take on why learning from PowerPoint lectures is frustrating. Unlike an old-school chalk talk, professors who use PowerPoint tend to present topics very quickly, leaving little time to digest the visuals or to take learning-reinforcing notes. Also, profs who use the ready-made PowerPoint lectures that ship with many textbooks tend to come across as, shall we say, less than connected with their material. Then there are professors who just don't know how to use PowerPoint, a problem that is by no means limited to college classes."
Are all college professors doing this? I think there are always in every generation going to be professors who don't want to put much effort into teaching classes. They are either there for doing research and thus don't care about learning or they aren't sure what they are doing there and just needed a job. There are a few annoying classes I took (in computer science even) where the professor would simply read from the book.
Wow, I'm old. I never really stopped and thought about just how horrid modern class rooms have become, I certainly never pictured some twit droning on from a canned Power Point.
On the upside you'll be properly prepared for any number of meetings.
There's a RIGHT way to use a computerized slides, and a WRONG way. MOST people do it the wrong way - trying to cram as much text as possible onto a single slide, then reading the slides to the audience. I won't even mention those that think their presentation isn't complete without AT LEAST 100 slides filled with, after everyone's brain has switched off, gibberish.
Slides are meant to ENHANCE and SUPPORT a presentation, not BE the presentation. They will NOT turn a mediocre teacher into a great one. I have a doctorate, so I've probably been in more years of classes than the author of the article (3rd year of college). I have been in some excellent world class courses that relied heavily on power point presentations (my microbiology teacher was just a GOOD teacher). And I have attended mind blisteringly dull lectures done on chalk (or whiteboard) in such varied topics as biochemistry and physiology (that cardiologist who will remain nameless - she simply doesn't know how to teach!). It's not the medium, it's the teacher.
Being a leader in your field or winning awards and prizes does NOT necessarily qualify you to teach well - that is an art in itself. And any number of audio-visual aids will not hide the fact that you're just a boring person that has no idea how to get your message across.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Speaking as a former professor who has written two entire semesters of Powerpoint lectures in Java, I think the medium is especially effective if the professor knows the material. I gave away my lectures and posted them online forever, so my students loved them. I also do not use powerpoint as just static slides. I use the animation feature to simulate the execution of code, showing (not telling) how variables are handled, how pass by value versus pass by reference works--things like that. It is really valuable if the professor is not a lazy sack of shit. That's the real problem--lazy professors. Profs who write their own lectures are anything but lazy.
I went to undergrad from 2002-2006. I had profs who used PowerPoint daily and I learned a ton from them. I had profs who used a "good old chalk talk" and they were awful. When it comes down to it, it's the prof. If he's a gifted teacher, it will shine through no matter which medium he chooses. Do yourself a favor and look up reviews for your profs before you sign up for their class.
Until recently, I was a vocal opponent of PowerPoint. I had read Tufte's essay and applied the assertion-evidence structure to my slides. When presenting certain types of data to an english audience, these measures are effective.
But when a relevant percentage of the audience does not understand English, or when the presenter does not speak English, writing the entire presentation down on the slides and reading off the slides is a more effective way of communicating. ESL students are more able to comprehend what they read than what they hear. What 'using powerpoint well' means is a function of the audience and the material.
Conclusion? Chalk Talk rules for fundamental science teaching. Powerpoint is probably OK for management theory classes.
Today we're talking about what's wrong with Powerpoint.
o And Why It Should Be Banned
And why its use should be banned.
o Speakers just put up bullet list and then read from it.
The biggest problem is that speakers put up a Powerpoint bullet list and then just read from it.
o Like their audience is illiterate or sumpin.
Like they think their audience is a bunch of illiterates or sumpin.
o Powerpoint presenters also say things like "actionizing our solutioning".
Also, Powerpoint seems to encourage speakers to say things like "actionizing our solutioning".
SLIDE 1
Let's move to slide 2.
There are various reasons why power point should be banned from schools. There's nothing wrong with power point, per se, but professors who use it, tend to abuse it and use it in ways that are counter to a learning environment.
I took a biology class a few years back where the professor provided a powerpoint presentation for every class. We were supposed to print it out before class and then in class, he would read through the power point presentation. Literally, word for word, reading the presentation, with little or no additional information. Obviously, once I figured out this was his modus operandi, I stopped going to the clas, as I'm quite capable of reading a power point presentation myself.
The problem with power point is that it's presenter (teacher) centric. This is fine in some forums, but in a classroom, a class lesson should be student centric. Students should interact and ask questions. The lesson should go at the pace that the students can absorb it, not at the pace the teacher can present it.
If all that's required to learn the information is to read, then why even have a class? Just give the kids a book and send them on their way...
The rise of PowerPoint for teaching is something I've been annoyed with for years. Honestly the best teaching tool my Professors ever used was the overhead transparency projector -- the type where the transparency was on a spool that the professor cranked to get a clean surface. This was far more legible then chalk, plus you could go crank the transparency spool in the opposite direction after class if you missed something. Not chalk dust either.
Powerpoint is annoying as professors tend to only put meaningless bullet points and skip working out the equations in real time, explaining as they go along. A good professor is interactive with the class, not just someone who reads from a script pointed at the screen. Sadly, this is way most (but not all) PowerPoint professors operate.
.....is certainly not demonstrated in this video. However, I do see more and more of this style these days
How NOT to use Powerpoint
Well, I teach an undergraduate course and avoid using presentation software -which, anyway, would have been Lyx plus Beamer for me-, for largely the kind of reasons advanced in TFA. Most of my colleagues use PowerPoint or something similar this days.
And I'm starting to notice that many students actually prefer the PP-teachers. They want to have the information delivered in formulaic pills, "Concept A stands for blah; Concept B stands for bleh", and this is more easily achieved if the formulae in question are neatly projected on the screen. I could achieve the same effect by dictating, of course, but that's even more boring and less empowering for students that PowerPoint.
The interesting thing for me is I am old enough to remember when students complain that some professors actually still writes on the board instead of using powerpoint! Because (1) their handwriting is poor, (2) professors write too fast anyway, trying to copy and listen at the same time is too much for many students, (3) professors could send out the powerpoint if they used it, so students don't have to copy them down!
Now, cue a decade later, professors used powerpoints and student complained they do not write on the board.
Yeah, right.
Newsflash! Learning is hard work. Unlike watching movies where you just sit in stupor for 2 hours and be entertained, when you attend a lecture you work hard to absorb and understand the materials presented by the professor. Most professor don't have $100M movie budget and 2 years to prepare a 2 hour lecture to entertain you.
If the presentation is lacking, then you take the effort to understand the content from it. If you cannot find any content in the lecture, then the course is probably not for you, either too easy or too hard, go enroll in another course, or read the textbooks yourself if you think the lectures are too easy.
You are responsible for your own learning. And if you are good, you might have understood this already before you leave school.
Oliver.
Just my personal opinion, but I think a reliance on technology for technologies sake can be an impediment to great education. Human interaction is an important part of communication and teaching.
Not only powerpoint, but some classes at my alma matter began having so-called laptop classes. I had one for calculus II. It was basically an excuse for kids to goof off. People were instant messaging each other or going on the internet. Laptop classes are a waste in most cases in my opinion, unless it is graduate work and complex programs are needed. It is like teaching from a powerpoint. If a lecturer just repeats exactly what is on the powerpoint it is extremely boring.
Give me a professor who wants to interact with students and really teach, and I will take that every time over any great online lecture, powerpoint slides, etc.
"Unlike an old-school chalk talk, professors who use PowerPoint tend to present topics very quickly, leaving little time to digest the visuals or to take learning-reinforcing notes"
Sounds like how my professors used to lecture with printed slides and, to a lesser extent, when writing slides by hand during the lecture. To cover the material, the lectures couldn't really have gone much slower but this can be addressed by providing students with decent printed notes, which all too often were missing or of extremely poor quality. The degree was very educational but to a large extent this was due to the hard work of students in their study time and due to the small group teaching that followed the lectures and attempted to pick up the pieces.
Not fantastic value-for-money given how expensive these courses are - but to some extent, that's what's going to happen if you choose *teaching* roles based on how good at research a professor is. Or for that matter, based on how senior and entrenched in the department and university a professor is. If you're going to pay someone to do something, you ought to have some decent oversight and minimum standards they are required to meet. Universities are not good at this sort of thing in my experience.
This is why I actually *LIKED* Power Points when I was in college. I could download them, and in most cases skip the lecture and just study off the Power Point.
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Presentation software is just a tool. I had a professor who could actually handle it pretty well. He had his slides set up in a very simple but readable manner, they weren't cramped. They were to the point, short and very well planned. And he gave each of his students a miniature printout of the lectures slides, so that everybody could anotate each one by himself with whatever they needed.
He'd use maybe 40 slides in a 90 minute lecture. His talk was educating, informative, sometimes quite humorous and you could actually understand what he was saying simply because he didn't have to hop around 3 chalkboards all the time but could stay put at the podium. He was allways well prepared and his lectures where a feast. And that even though it was a hard subject (IT-electronics subcurriculum in CS).
Bottom line: ... duh). Use them correctly and you will be able to utilise the benefits that they bring along. It's that simple.
Presentation software, just like chalkboards, are nothing but tools. Use them badly or in the wrong way and your results will be accordingly (like, f.i., cramped, braindead presentation-slides or crappy handwriting on chalkboards
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Learning is easy because it's an innate human ability. Humans learn best when it's trial and error, through discovery and at their own pace. Unfortunately, that doesn't fit in with the structured classroom where everyone is forced to learn at a minimum pace and using the same materials.
Formal education is backwards and was designed for the ease of the teacher.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Powerpoint is great for showing concepts through demonstration. Videos and animations can greatly enhance the student learning process. Of course there is a right way and wrong way to do this. I've come to prefer learning via Powerpoint instead of chalk boards (ugh) or transparencies. It's a bonus if we can get the slides ahead of time to print out and bring to class. That way we can write notes on our slides during the class.
While it is important that there are opportunities for use of different learning styles, (such as the blogger wanting to be able to take notes during a talk) there will also be others that learn differently.
The blogger may find it best to take notes on everything that the professor is saying - there are others for whom it will be most productive to sit and listen intently and not take any notes at all.
The problem seems to be then, not the PowerPoint itself, but the pacing that the professors use. If they are to do problems on PowerPoint, they should have the steps appear gradually as they are working through the problem, and use the appropriate pacing, to ensure that students have the opportunity to follow the problem.
As for not having handouts of the PowerPoint slide, or their availability being in some way a disadvantage - I would say it's time to grow up. Adults are responsible for their own learning. If someone knows that they learn best by taking notes, then take notes anyway. The availability of the notes after the class will be something very positive for many others, and to request that the notes not be available for their sake is to fail to recognize the learning needs of others.
I’ve been a computer science professor for many years at a very good university, and in most of my classes I try to *only* use slides for images or diagrams that are so complicated or precise that I would not want to reproduce them by hand. Everything else is either me talking or writing on the whiteboard. Sometimes I have handwritten notes to remind me what topics I wanted to cover.
My students, for the most part, HATE this. It completely turns their expectations of a class upside down. After a few weeks, I start getting a deluge of “when are the slides going to be online” from the students who never attend class and don’t realize that there aren’t slides. Even students who *are* in class complain bitterly that they don’t have “anything to study from”. I’ve had students complain (in groups, sometimes with signed petitions) to my department chair and to my dean, saying that not providing slides creates (and I quote from one recent complaint) an “unreasonable expectation of attendance and/or note-taking”. I have fielded angry phone calls from PARENTS saying that their student isn’t doing well in my course because I’m not providing him/her with the “expected study aids”. None of this is made up.
I’ve seen identical behavior from freshmen in a required core course, seniors in a high-level elective, and graduate students in an automata-theory course. At least in the automata course they have a textbook so wonderfully clear that they really *can* learn the material from it (Sipser, and no I didn’t write it). They all crave powerpoint and suffer withdrawal when they don’t have it, because it means they have to engage in (and go to!) the lecture and not just try to cram from the slides at the last minute.
When I receive these complaints, I explain as patiently as I can that these are precisely the reasons I eschew slides, and why I value the attention and dialogue that writing and extemporaneous speaking facilitate. I think students get the point, but they didn’t come to college to think, try, and learn. They came to college so they could get a degree so they can get a job, and anything that stands in their way must be stopped.
They are just going with the flow. Most knowledge workers I know have already lost the art of writing good documents, reports, or even a well-structured email. All written communication is dumbed down to lists of bullet points. Sometimes managers demand it (sometimes they even specify the required number of bullets), but it has become the default form of communication for most.
In college we did a course on effective communications... one of the things they drilled into us is that the slides are not the handout or the report, the slides belong with the presentation. Somewhat paradoxically good slides cannot stand on their own; if you provide them as a handout, they will require supporting text (which Powerpoint provides space for, by the way!). Don't be tempted to put everything on the slides themselves.
Sadly I see more and more reports and documents being crammed into monolythic and insanely ill-structured Powerpoints, which get presented then get mailed round as the final documentation to be archived. Send a "proper" presentation with supporting documentation, and you'll get complaints about the poor quality of your slides; the document that contains the imformation that is actually important will go unread, of course. Send only the document, and they'll reply: "I am not reading all that", even if there is a good executive summary.
(ps. That doesn't mean that we do not produce Word documents anymore, on the contrary! Preferably documents based on ill-designed templates asking for meaningless and/or useless informations, that serves only to tick certain boxes in the process, and will be filed unread and unused. Oh, I'm not bitter or anything...)
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Damn, I wish my school administration would read this. Every time a building is remodeled, the projector screens get larger and the boards get smaller. In the newest rooms, the whiteboard is about 70cm high and 140cm wide (30" by 60") - nearly useless. Meanwhile, the projection screen is huge, six or eight times that size. I am forced to put most of my material in the presentation. There ain't no other way to do it!
While I'm venting: there are no blackboards anymore, only whiteboards. Why anyone think these abominations are progress is beyond me: the pens can't deliver ink fast enough - the first few words are nice, then they get faint and the pens don't recover until they sit for a good, long while. I suppose the suits didn't like chalk dust on their pinstripes, but give me a good quality blackboard any day.
We're getting a new school building in two years. I will probably need a magnifying glass to find the whiteboards. Assuming they haven't been eliminated entirely...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
As a prof, I get to see the lovely material that comes with books. It generally sucks. The publisher takes the illustrations out of the book, has someone who clearly doesn't understand the material copy in a few bullet points, and that's it.
Anyway, the students don't need the book to be read to them. The prof needs to present a different explanation with different examples - to give a different viewpoint. Any prof who uses the slides provided with the book is not doing the job.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
When the student is ready to learn something, the teacher will become available.
If this were even remotely close to true, the world would be a much better place. We need more teachers, and as a society we're not promoting them. Everything from the way we pay actual teachers-by-trade to the way our society addresses founts of knowledge as "know-it-alls" and "smart-asses" blunts the urge to teach.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I would direct any professor to this link: http://lifehacker.com/323554/stop-death-by-powerpoint I have my executives go through this before attempting to create their presentation.
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