Most advice about using Microsoft PowerPoint is geared toward business users. Experts speak of creating presentations that entertain and motivate, while acknowledging that listeners can only absorb a small amount of information in one sitting.
But if you're a teacher, let's say in high school or college, your goals are different. Rather than motivating students to act or make a decision, you want them to learn. Ultimately they will be tested on content. You want to grab your students intellectually, not necessarily emotionally.
Patrick Douglas Crispen, a faculty training and support coordinator for the California State University at Long Beach, has written about the use of PowerPoint in education. He points out that there is quite a difference between a business PowerPoint presentation and a classroom PowerPoint presentation. Notes Crispen, "The primary goal of any classroom PowerPoint presentation isn't to entertain, but rather to teach."
Should you use PowerPoint at all? If so, when and how? Teachers want to know whether PowerPoint slideshows will help their students to learn, or hinder them. And because the education presentation and those used in business are different animals, teachers at all levels need to reconsider the standard business use of text and images, how best to organize their slides, and how to take advantage of PowerPoint's Notes feature.
The Mayer multimedia principles
A psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Richard E. Mayer has studied the way students learn from visuals and lectures. In his book, Multimedia Learning (Cambridge University Press, 2001), Mayer summarizes his research on how people learn when they see and hear multimedia content, taking into account the various combinations of words and pictures.
Mayer's work outlines several multimedia principles, the main one stating that people learn better from words and pictures than from words alone. He also notes that not all educational material lends itself to a visual representation, but when appropriate, visuals can help students learn. In addition, people learn better when words are near corresponding pictures and there is no extraneous information nearby to distract attention.
What should a PowerPoint-using educator take from this? And how do you know when an image is extraneous? Some teachers suggest not using images at all, not even logos or templates, unless it is necessary for explaining the content, the material is very difficult, or students need help understanding the topic. Remember, students are tested on facts and processes, not on the images.
So before you place an image on a lecture slide, consider the following:
* Is it specifically related to the text on the slide?
* Would leaving out the image remove crucial information?
While scholarly arguments on the usefulness of visuals in teaching may not be final, one thing is certain -- you don't use images in an educational setting the way you do in a business setting. "When in doubt, leave it out" is a good motto for educators.Keep slides organized