The availability of technical equipment simplifies our live, and thus, also teaching. However, I have the impression that it seduces to show to much information and, moreover, since most of presentations are online available, students to not make any notes anymore since they can download everything. Thus, they follow like the presentation like a movie... and possibly do not understand the content. If you try to copy a graph from the blackboard or write an equation (inclusive errors which will be made and corrected during writing even from the presenter) requires some kind of active interaction.
Does our current teaching really improves the level of knowledge of our students?
Anecdotally, it is an easy way to dispense information but is insufficient in promoting actual learning if not used in conjunction with other methods. Writing on the board has the benefit of modelling the thinking process of a teacher, but is more time consuming and can be distracting for some students.
Dear Gert,
As a researcher of technology use for teaching practices, I believe that teaching with PPT aid is indeed really beneficial for the students. There are some pieces of research that show that. However, what I consider most important is the proper use of this technological aid, without simply relying on it as a resource, and using other aids as well, such as the blackboard, realia and other digital resources. As Steve Jobs once mentioned: technology per se does not teach.
In my experience, in teaching foreign languages PPTs may be helpful, especially in providing additional comfort to the teacher. But students tend to fall asleep and need reinforcement of the notions taught every 30 minutes or so.
I do not have anything against teaching using PPTs since all do it. And I hope if you risk a look on my presentations, my slides are hopefully well designed and not boring. There are animations, 3D-images etc. This was in fact not the goal of my question.
I would compare it more with movies and books. Movies are perfect and offer a nice entertainment. No offend. However, if you read a book you need to use your own imagination, i.e. practically everybody has other images in his head. In movies you are simply consumer, reading books you are more. You are your own movie maker! With PPTs is looks to me very similar. We are going more and more to entertain students but is this seriously our job? A study is in first view no fun activity. If, for instance, students do not make any notes they are either not able to do this or they already know the topic which is often very unlikely. This means to me that during examinations they simply try to memorize. But is this really good for an education if we need inspired, motivated and (mostly) creative people if we don't teach them how to be creative?
What you would expect if you would ask people whether movies (PPTs) are "more helpful" than books (blackboard)? Such surveys you can make but they actually already contain the (sometimes wished) answer.
We are driving personal cars and know how beneficial it is. Nevertheless we also know we are destroying our environment. Nevertheless we do not stop since we do not want waive on the comfort (although we KNOW that we are running into a trap!). Similarly I see the use of PPTs. No student would say: "Don't use it. Take the blackboard since we have to copy everything and make notes by our self!" which is BTW also a very good lecture: Making notes about a talk so that you can recreate it from your memory. I think, for many students this is currently an unsolvable problem (especially if they need to communicate at the same time with different people via WhatsApp or another messenger service).
There is going something in general wrong with our educational systems and our educational demand.
In my experience students have better experience in learning using PPT than using black and talk method.
Frank Angelo Pacala : Do you have any direct comparison? Did you give (complete) lectures using blackboard? I have to admit that for us as lecturers PPTs are also much more beneficial and therefore also our answers might be quite biased. :-) Imagine, you need to prepare for every lecture. Who is doing this? You are starting your PPT and you have to follow only your red line. No thinking about this..like a robot :-). The next step is possibly that you don't need to give lectures anymore since internet will and can replace you...
Gert Nolze: I do not have a comparison on the use of PPT as lecture but I do have a research on PPT as a tool in giving quiz. In this research, I found out that giving quiz using PPT is improving the scores of the students than the traditional way of quiz delivery. Use can read the article here: Deleted research item The research item mentioned here has been deleted
It depends on how they're used. If the lecturer/teacher is just going to read out what's on the PPT slides, then there's no point in my being in the class, I could just read that for myself. If they add something else - activities, supplementary work, blackboard/whiteboard work, handouts, additional explanations - then the PPT is a resource like any other and it is also beneficial.
We also have to consider how good the technology is. I've been in classes where the lecturer relied on a PPT, but the tech wasn't good enough to show it clearly, so you got a headache trying to read it. Or in a big room, it may not be visible to people at the back. In a small room, people's heads may prevent you from seeing everything. All of these have to be considered when planning PPT presentations, especially if you intend your class/lecture to be heavily reliant on them.
Tufte suggests handouts rather than slides. I have occasionally used handouts with slides to some effect.
I think Ppt in teaching should only serve as cues, but the actual learning and sharing takes place beyond ppts. Sometimes relying too heavily on ppts limits interactive discussion during the lecture or session and leads to monotony
ppts alone cannot be the only source of teaching. The practical implementation of the concept should also be shared and involvement of the students should be a part of teaching methodology
Power-point has become an important part of many instructional settings, especially in large classes and in courses more geared toward information exchange than skill development. PowerPoint can be a highly effective tool to aid learning, but if not used carefully, may instead disengage students and actually hinder learning. and according to that, there are many advantages and disadvantages of teaching by power point. Examples of the advantages are Increasing visual impact, improving audience focus, providing annotations and highlights, analyzing and synthesizing complexities, an enriching curriculum with interdisciplinary, increasing spontaneity and interactivity and increasing wonder.
Mr. Breesem, for me your general statement is much ton non-specified (not to say, meaningless). "...if not used carefully..." What does such statement mean? I've never heard from someone that he agreed that his presentation is or was of low quality. Tell me, who does not use a PPT carefully! I mean: How you would define this?
On the other hand, we "know" (better: believe to know) all the (commonly addressed) advantages of a well-prepared talk or lecture. But, we also know how beneficial personal cars, fast food and mass tourism are. Nevertheless, we (in fact) agree that all of them are finally not that good as it is claimed (mostly by the advertising industry. It is their job to manipulate us!)
The problem with PPTs is very difficult since PPTs are very CONVENIENT (we should not mix convenient and beneficial!) for both the lecturer (you prepare it only once, easy to change, always available, no blackboard required (no cleaning and writing necessary), well visible, modern appearance, great entertainment opportunity...) as well as for the "consuments", our students (if well done easy to read, "nice" to follow, PPTs often downloadable or given as printouts, i.e. no or less writing required, presence not absolutely necessary (mostly darker so that one can rest in between) etc).
Don't we delude ourselves if we believe ourselves how genial PPTs are?
There are countless things around us which appear fantastic (mostly only on the first glance) but much later we realize that we destroyd at the same time typical human properties and achievement like communication?
In education this has a very long-term impact and not only on ourselves but the future generations.
I realize that I mispelled his name. I am curious about how many of you have heard of Edward Tufte?
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
Jan 2001by Edward R. Tufte
Hello, well it really depend on what you are teaching.If figures and graphs are required then the PPT may be useful. However. I believe the students should be able to connect to the teachers. Mostly the PPT`s can be distractions.
I strongly advise visiting Prof. Bruce Hilliard’s web page which can be found here: http://www.seahorses-consulting.com The amount of useful and FREE content is amazing. His Doctoral Thesis; “Optimising Viewer Comprehension and Shaping Impressions and Attention Through the Formatting of Content in Tools Like Microsoft ® Powerpoint” is the best that I have read and will answer all of your question.
PowerPoint Presentation (PPTs) should include illustrative graphs, diagrams, tables, movies, etc. rather than a plain text, which distracts the students more than helps them. In my teaching I try to use methods described by Steinert&Snell: Article Interactive lecturing: strategies for increasing participati...
I have very recent (anecdotal) experience with this. I started teaching 10 years ago. For my first courses I did the old-fashioned blackboarding, recalling my classes in the nineties. Then, for a master-course, I decided to go all .ppt, being modern and all, and I kept this up even for introductory physics courses later on. Now, for a recent course, I felt too lazy, or stressed, to prepare .ppt-s, since that is a lot of work, and decided to just blackboard, even though it is a course that would highly benefit from nice band-structure diagrams and other figures. But I just try to draw them up, best I can (which still is quite ugly, imagine a hand-drawn monocolor band structure of GaAlAs).
I sometimes do active problem-solving in class, and as I walk around, I noticed that the students have much nicer-looking notes than whatever they could have seen on my blackboard. So, either they go home and redo their notes based on the textbooks, or they are just real geniuses in note-taking. In any event, they must work hard on this.
Also, for a few classes I did prepare .ppt-s, and to my shock, half the class seeped away during the presentation, and the rest just dozed off.
Generally each Teacher should have the own way to working with Student's.
Greetings,
Edeltrauda
@Edeltrauda: Isn't this obvious? Of course, every teacher has its own way, but this was not my question. The question is: Is total entertainment by perfect ppts really good for teaching? Or doesn't it distract from "effective" learning? Does it really keep students attentive...or does the majority "sleeps" after a while?
Simply put, PPTs (or any visuals) are important to use because they reinforce the verbal message with another mode of communication. They help the listener to pick out the important words in the message. Additionally, when pictures, graphs or illustrations are used, they speak to those who are more visual learners than auditory learners. More modes aide in more retention.
I know it is provocative, but if we turn it around, it seems so that all teaching without PPT in former times was obviously awful and not successful at all! :-)
We know, it isn't. And I still do not see any proof that the use of PPT's is the basis for more intelligent and creative students. On contrary, the use of PPTs makes our life as teachers easier or possibly distracts from the actually important message to an endless improvement of design and entertainment.
We can point to some serious problems, like one of the shuttle disasters, because of PowerPoints. Communicating visually can be powerful, but it also costs a lot to do it effectively.
Edward Tufte's treatises on visual representations recommend handouts instead. Handouts in addition to might be good as well. One danger of PowerPoints are that they tend to put us in passive mode as listeners, rather than an active role.
I agree with handouts - there's no chance that you won't be able to see those because someone's head is in the way!
Dear Nolze,
It really depends on the nature of course. If the course belongs to conceptual type, understanding level of students shall be enhanced by screening few animations included in the presentation. If the course is of analytical in nature, definitely we need to use Chalk and talk to provide better clarity. Overall, it is better to use right mixture of technology and traditional way to provide the required knowledge transfer to the students.
power point presentation rubric college
- https://www.cabrillo.edu/~ncrane/bio1c/botPDFs/Powerpoint%20Rubric.pdf
- https://www.rcampus.com/rubricshowc.cfm?code=A466X2&sp=true
- https://messiah.instructure.com/files/74394080/download?download_frd=1
Today students are technology friendly but using only ppt are not much helpful. Beside these for clarity of concepts brainstorming, mindmapping, showing short videos, asking questions, giving some activities like quizzes, exercises more engaging students.
Have you seen this:
https://jewlscholar.mtsu.edu/bitstream/handle/mtsu/4512/Smith_Honors%20Thesis.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
It gives the perspective of a group of students on the debate about the use, impact and validity of using PowerPoint
I do hear BSA Scout trainings described as "death by PowerPoint." Making good presentations is also not enough. Consider Dr. Arnold B. Aaron's "Unwelcome Truth:"
"Much as we might dislike the implications, research is showing, that didactic exposition of abstract ideas and lines of reasoning (however engaging and lucid we might try to make them) to passive listeners yields pathetically thin results in learning and understanding - except in the very small percentage of students who are specially gifted in the field." -"A Guide to Introductory Physics Teaching." Arnold B. Aaron's
I think PPTs are really effective in teaching as they hold the attention of students for a longer span also it can be used by students later for reference...
PPTs are really beneficial for students during lectures its my personal experience as I was a student and now as a teacher...but what really holds the students is your teaching methodology and style of explaining the things during lectures.
I am often frustrated to find that often with PPTs that students wait to engage the concepts for the slides to be made available "after" class. Paying attention right now is too much work. Somehow many never end up paying attention to them.
I currently only do one presentation to speak of in my physics courses. It is about optics. Students' and my confidence in ray tracing depends entirely upon the accuracy of the diagrams. For that course I hand out handouts to students, so they can make notes right on the paper.
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