uses of powerpoint presentation in teaching and learning

• Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning
• Instructional Guide

Teaching with PowerPoint

When effectively planned and used, PowerPoint (or similar tools, like Google Slides) can enhance instruction. People are divided on the effectiveness of this ubiquitous presentation program—some say that PowerPoint is wonderful while others bemoan its pervasiveness. No matter which side you take, PowerPoint does offer effective ways to enhance instruction when used and designed appropriately.

PowerPoint can be an effective tool to present material in the classroom and encourage student learning. You can use PowerPoint to project visuals that would otherwise be difficult to bring to class. For example, in an anthropology class, a single PowerPoint presentation could project images of an anthropological dig from a remote area, questions asking students about the topic, a chart of related statistics, and a mini quiz about what was just discussed that provides students with information that is visual, challenging, and engaging.

PowerPoint can be an effective tool to present material in the classroom and encourage student learning.

This section is organized in three major segments: Part I will help faculty identify and use basic but important design elements, Part II will cover ways to enhance teaching and learning with PowerPoint, and Part III will list ways to engage students with PowerPoint.

PART I: Designing the PowerPoint Presentation

Accessibility.

• Student accessibility—students with visual or hearing impairments may not be able to fully access a PowerPoint presentation, especially those with graphics, images, and sound.
• Use an accessible layout. Built-in slide template layouts were designed to be accessible: “the reading order is the same for people with vision and for people who use assistive technology such as screen readers” (University of Washington, n.d.). If you want to alter the layout of a theme, use the Slide Master; this will ensure your slides will retain accessibility.
• Use unique and specific slide titles so students can access the material they need.
• Consider how you display hyperlinks. Since screen readers read what is on the page, you may want to consider creating a hyperlink using a descriptive title instead of displaying the URL.
• All visuals and tables should include alt text. Alt text should describe the visual or table in detail so that students with visual impairments can “read” the images with their screen readers. Avoid using too many decorative visuals.
• All video and audio content should be captioned for students with hearing impairments. Transcripts can also be useful as an additional resource, but captioning ensures students can follow along with what is on the screen in real-time.
• Simplify your tables. If you use tables on your slides, ensure they are not overly complex and do not include blank cells. Screen readers may have difficulty providing information about the table if there are too many columns and rows, and they may “think” the table is complete if they come to a blank cell.
• Set a reading order for text on your slides. The order that text appears on the slide may not be the reading order of the text. Check that your reading order is correct by using the Selection Pane (organized bottom-up).
• Use Microsoft’s Accessibility Checker to identify potential accessibility issues in your completed PowerPoint. Use the feedback to improve your PowerPoint’s accessibility. You could also send your file to the Disability Resource Center to have them assess its accessibility (send it far in advance of when you will need to use it).
• Save your PowerPoint presentation as a PDF file to distribute to students with visual impairments.

Preparing for the presentation

• Consider time and effort in preparing a PowerPoint presentation; give yourself plenty of lead time for design and development.
• PowerPoint is especially useful when providing course material online. Consider student technology compatibility with PowerPoint material put on the web; ensure images and graphics have been compressed for access by computers using dial-up connection.

PowerPoint is especially useful when providing course material online.

• Be aware of copyright law when displaying course materials, and properly cite source material. This is especially important when using visuals obtained from the internet or other sources. This also models proper citation for your students.
• Think about message interpretation for PowerPoint use online: will students be able to understand material in a PowerPoint presentation outside of the classroom? Will you need to provide notes and/or other material to help students understand complex information, data, or graphics?
• If you will be using your own laptop, make sure the classroom is equipped with the proper cables, drivers, and other means to display your presentation the way you have intended.

Slide content

• Avoid text-dense slides. It’s better to have more slides than trying to place too much text on one slide. Use brief points instead of long sentences or paragraphs and outline key points rather than transcribing your lecture. Use PowerPoint to cue and guide the presentation.
• Use the Notes feature to add content to your presentation that the audience will not see. You can access the Notes section for each slide by sliding the bottom of the slide window up to reveal the notes section or by clicking “View” and choosing “Notes Page” from the Presentation Views options.
• Relate PowerPoint material to course objectives to reinforce their purpose for students.

Number of slides

• As a rule of thumb, plan to show one slide per minute to account for discussion and time and for students to absorb the material.
• Reduce redundant or text-heavy sentences or bullets to ensure a more professional appearance.
• Incorporate active learning throughout the presentation to hold students’ interest and reinforce learning.

Emphasizing content

• Use italics, bold, and color for emphasizing content.
• Use of a light background (white, beige, yellow) with dark typeface or a dark background (blue, purple, brown) with a light typeface is easy to read in a large room.
• Avoid using too many colors or shifting colors too many times within the presentation, which can be distracting to students.
• Avoid using underlines for emphasis; underlining typically signifies hypertext in digital media.

Use of a light background with dark typeface or a dark background with a light typeface is easy to read in a large room.

• Limit the number of typeface styles to no more than two per slide. Try to keep typeface consistent throughout your presentation so it does not become a distraction.
• Avoid overly ornate or specialty fonts that may be harder for students to read. Stick to basic fonts so as not to distract students from the content.
• Ensure the typeface is large enough to read from anywhere in the room: titles and headings should be no less than 36-40-point font. The subtext should be no less than 32-point font.

Clip art and graphics

• Use clip art and graphics sparingly. Research shows that it’s best to use graphics only when they support the content. Irrelevant graphics and images have been proven to hinder student learning.
• Photographs can be used to add realism. Again, only use photographs that are relevant to the content and serve a pedagogical purpose. Images for decorative purposes are distracting.
• Size and place graphics appropriately on the slide—consider wrapping text around a graphic.
• Use two-dimensional pie and bar graphs rather than 3D styles which can interfere with the intended message.

Use clip art and graphics sparingly. Research shows that it’s best to use graphics only when they support the content.

Animation and sound

• Add motion, sound, or music only when necessary. When in doubt, do without.
• Avoid distracting animations and transitions. Excessive movement within or between slides can interfere with the message and students find them distracting. Avoid them or use only simple screen transitions.

Final check

• Check for spelling, correct word usage, flow of material, and overall appearance of the presentation.
• Colleagues can be helpful to check your presentation for accuracy and appeal. Note: Errors are more obvious when they are projected.
• Schedule at least one practice session to check for timing and flow.
• PowerPoint’s Slide Sorter View is especially helpful to check slides for proper sequencing as well as information gaps and redundancy. You can also use the preview pane on the left of the screen when you are editing the PowerPoint in “Normal” view.
• Prepare for plan “B” in case you have trouble with the technology in the classroom: how will you provide material located on your flash drive or computer? Have an alternate method of instruction ready (printing a copy of your PowerPoint with notes is one idea).

PowerPoint’s Slide Sorter View is especially helpful to check slides for proper sequencing and information gaps and redundancy.

PowerPoint Handouts

PowerPoint provides multiple options for print-based handouts that can be distributed at various points in the class.

Before class: students might like having materials available to help them prepare and formulate questions before the class period.

During class: you could distribute a handout with three slides and lines for notes to encourage students to take notes on the details of your lecture so they have notes alongside the slide material (and aren’t just taking notes on the slide content).

After class: some instructors wait to make the presentation available after the class period so that students concentrate on the presentation rather than reading ahead on the handout.

Never: Some instructors do not distribute the PowerPoint to students so that students don’t rely on access to the presentation and neglect to pay attention in class as a result.

• PowerPoint slides can be printed in the form of handouts—with one, two, three, four, six, or nine slides on a page—that can be given to students for reference during and after the presentation. The three-slides-per-page handout includes lined space to assist in note-taking.
• Notes Pages. Detailed notes can be printed and used during the presentation, or if they are notes intended for students, they can be distributed before the presentation.
• Outline View. PowerPoint presentations can be printed as an outline, which provides all the text from each slide. Outlines offer a welcome alternative to slide handouts and can be modified from the original presentation to provide more or less information than the projected presentation.

The Presentation

Alley, Schreiber, Ramsdell, and Muffo (2006) suggest that PowerPoint slide headline design “affects audience retention,” and they conclude that “succinct sentence headlines are more effective” in information recall than headlines of short phrases or single words (p. 233). In other words, create slide titles with as much information as is used for newspapers and journals to help students better understand the content of the slide.

• PowerPoint should provide key words, concepts, and images to enhance your presentation (but PowerPoint should not replace you as the presenter).
• Avoid reading from the slide—reading the material can be perceived as though you don’t know the material. If you must read the material, provide it in a handout instead of a projected PowerPoint slide.
• Avoid moving a laser pointer across the slide rapidly. If using a laser pointer, use one with a dot large enough to be seen from all areas of the room and move it slowly and intentionally.

Avoid reading from the slide—reading the material can be perceived as though you don’t know the material.

• Use a blank screen to allow students to reflect on what has just been discussed or to gain their attention (Press B for a black screen or W for a white screen while delivering your slide show; press these keys again to return to the live presentation). This pause can also be used for a break period or when transitioning to new content.
• Stand to one side of the screen and face the audience while presenting. Using Presenter View will display your slide notes to you on the computer monitor while projecting only the slides to students on the projector screen.
• Leave classroom lights on and turn off lights directly over the projection screen if possible. A completely dark or dim classroom will impede notetaking (and may encourage nap-taking).
• Learn to use PowerPoint efficiently and have a back-up plan in case of technical failure.
• Give yourself enough time to finish the presentation. Trying to rush through slides can give the impression of an unorganized presentation and may be difficult for students to follow or learn.

PART II: Enhancing Teaching and Learning with PowerPoint

Class preparation.

PowerPoint can be used to prepare lectures and presentations by helping instructors refine their material to salient points and content. Class lectures can be typed in outline format, which can then be refined as slides. Lecture notes can be printed as notes pages  (notes pages: Printed pages that display author notes beneath the slide that the notes accompany.) and could also be given as handouts to accompany the presentation.

Multimodal Learning

Using PowerPoint can help you present information in multiple ways (a multimodal approach) through the projection of color, images, and video for the visual mode; sound and music for the auditory mode; text and writing prompts for the reading/writing mode; and interactive slides that ask students to do something, e.g. a group or class activity in which students practice concepts, for the kinesthetic mode (see Part III: Engaging Students with PowerPoint for more details). Providing information in multiple modalities helps improve comprehension and recall for all students.

Providing information in multiple modalities helps improve comprehension and recall for all students.

Type-on Live Slides

PowerPoint allows users to type directly during the slide show, which provides another form of interaction. These write-on slides can be used to project students’ comments and ideas for the entire class to see. When the presentation is over, the new material can be saved to the original file and posted electronically. This feature requires advanced preparation in the PowerPoint file while creating your presentation. For instructions on how to set up your type-on slide text box, visit this tutorial from AddictiveTips .  

Write or Highlight on Slides

PowerPoint also allows users to use tools to highlight or write directly onto a presentation while it is live. When you are presenting your PowerPoint, move your cursor over the slide to reveal tools in the lower-left corner. One of the tools is a pen icon. Click this icon to choose either a laser pointer, pen, or highlighter. You can use your cursor for these options, or you can use the stylus for your smart podium computer monitor or touch-screen laptop monitor (if applicable).  

Just-In-Time Course Material

You can make your PowerPoint slides, outline, and/or notes pages available online 24/7 through Blackboard, OneDrive, other websites. Students can review the material before class, bring printouts to class, and better prepare themselves for listening rather than taking a lot of notes during the class period. They can also come to class prepared with questions about the material so you can address their comprehension of the concepts.

PART III: Engaging Students with PowerPoint

The following techniques can be incorporated into PowerPoint presentations to increase interactivity and engagement between students and between students and the instructor. Each technique can be projected as a separate PowerPoint slide.

Running Slide Show as Students Arrive in the Classroom

This technique provides visual interest and can include a series of questions for students to answer as they sit waiting for class to begin. These questions could be on future texts or quizzes.

• Opening Question : project an opening question, e.g. “Take a moment to reflect on ___.”
• Think of what you know about ___.
• Turn to a partner and share your knowledge about ___.
• Share with the class what you have discussed with your partner.
• Focused Listing helps with recall of pertinent information, e.g. “list as many characteristics of ___, or write down as many words related to ___ as you can think of.”
• Brainstorming stretches the mind and promotes deep thinking and recall of prior knowledge, e.g. “What do you know about ___? Start with your clearest thoughts and then move on to those what are kind of ‘out there.’”
• Questions : ask students if they have any questions roughly every 15 minutes. This technique provides time for students to reflect and is also a good time for a scheduled break or for the instructor to interact with students.
• Note Check : ask students to “take a few minutes to compare notes with a partner,” or “…summarize the most important information,” or “…identify and clarify any sticking points,” etc.
• Questions and Answer Pairs : have students “take a minute to come with one question then see if you can stump your partner!”
• The Two-Minute Paper allows the instructor to check the class progress, e.g. “summarize the most important points of today’s lecture.” Have students submit the paper at the end of class.
• “If You Could Ask One Last Question—What Would It Be?” This technique allows for students to think more deeply about the topic and apply what they have learned in a question format.
• A Classroom Opinion Poll provides a sense of where students stand on certain topics, e.g. “do you believe in ___,” or “what are your thoughts on ___?”
• Muddiest Point allows anonymous feedback to inform the instructor if changes and or additions need to be made to the class, e.g. “What parts of today’s material still confuse you?”
• Most Useful Point can tell the instructor where the course is on track, e.g. “What is the most useful point in today’s material, and how can you illustrate its use in a practical setting?”

Positive Features of PowerPoint

• PowerPoint saves time and energy—once the presentation has been created, it is easy to update or modify for other courses.
• PowerPoint is portable and can be shared easily with students and colleagues.
• PowerPoint supports multimedia, such as video, audio, images, and

PowerPoint supports multimedia, such as video, audio, images, and animation.

Potential Drawbacks of PowerPoint

• PowerPoint could reduce the opportunity for classroom interaction by being the primary method of information dissemination or designed without built-in opportunities for interaction.
• PowerPoint could lead to information overload, especially with the inclusion of long sentences and paragraphs or lecture-heavy presentations with little opportunity for practical application or active learning.
• PowerPoint could “drive” the instruction and minimize the opportunity for spontaneity and creative teaching unless the instructor incorporates the potential for ingenuity into the presentation. 

As with any technology, the way PowerPoint is used will determine its pedagogical effectiveness. By strategically using the points described above, PowerPoint can be used to enhance instruction and engage students.

Alley, M., Schreiber, M., Ramsdell, K., & Muffo, J. (2006). How the design of headlines in presentation slides affects audience retention. Technical Communication, 53 (2), 225-234. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/43090718

University of Washington, Accessible Technology. (n.d.). Creating accessible presentations in Microsoft PowerPoint. Retrieved from https://www.washington.edu/accessibility/documents/powerpoint/  

Selected Resources

Brill, F. (2016). PowerPoint for teachers: Creating interactive lessons. LinkedIn Learning . Retrieved from https://www.lynda.com/PowerPoint-tutorials/PowerPoint-Teachers-Create-Interactive-Lessons/472427-2.html

Huston, S. (2011). Active learning with PowerPoint [PDF file]. DE Oracle @ UMUC . Retrieved from http://contentdm.umuc.edu/digital/api/collection/p16240coll5/id/78/download

Microsoft Office Support. (n.d.). Make your PowerPoint presentations accessible to people with disabilities. Retrieved from https://support.office.com/en-us/article/make-your-powerpoint-presentations-accessible-to-people-with-disabilities-6f7772b2-2f33-4bd2-8ca7-ae3b2b3ef25

Tufte, E. R. (2006). The cognitive style of PowerPoint: Pitching out corrupts within. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press LLC.

University of Nebraska Medical Center, College of Medicine. (n.d.). Active Learning with a PowerPoint. Retrieved from https://www.unmc.edu/com/_documents/active-learning-ppt.pdf

University of Washington, Department of English. (n.d.). Teaching with PowerPoint. Retrieved from https://english.washington.edu/teaching/teaching-powerpoint

Vanderbilt University, Center for Teaching. (n.d.). Making better PowerPoint presentations. Retrieved from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/making-better-powerpoint-presentations/

Suggested citation

Northern Illinois University Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. (2020). Teaching with PowerPoint. In Instructional guide for university faculty and teaching assistants. Retrieved from https://www.niu.edu/citl/resources/guides/instructional-guide

Phone: 815-753-0595 Email: [email protected]

Connect with us on

Facebook page Twitter page YouTube page Instagram page LinkedIn page

Advertisement

PowerPoint Presentation Technology and the Dynamics of Teaching

• Open access
• Published: 02 August 2006
• Volume 31 , pages 147–160, ( 2006 )

Cite this article

You have full access to this open access article

• Russell J. Craig 1 &
• Joel H. Amernic 2  

74k Accesses

89 Citations

100 Altmetric

15 Mentions

Explore all metrics

This article presents a wide-ranging analysis of the use of PowerPoint technology in higher education. It addresses four overlapping issues. Has PowerPoint led to more effective learning? What impact has PowerPoint had on the dynamics of classrooms? What are some important aspects of the culture that accompanies PowerPoint? How has PowerPoint affected orality, visuality and literacy? The purpose of our article is to stimulate beneficial conversations about a prevalent educational software technology.

Similar content being viewed by others

Next Steps: Toward a Relational Mode of Thinking for Educational Technology

A Synoptic View

From New Educational Technologies to a Personal-Instructional Repertoire

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

This article focuses on PowerPoint, a powerful and ubiquitous communications technology and aid to teaching and business presentations. In 2002, it was estimated that more than 400 million copies of PowerPoint were in circulation and that “somewhere between 20 and 30 million PowerPoint-based presentations are given around the globe each day” (Simons, 2005 ). Those numbers seem likely to have grown exponentially since then. Indeed, Parker ( 2001 ) alleged that to “appear at a meeting without PowerPoint would be unwelcome and vaguely pretentious, like wearing no shoes” (pdf version, p. 2). Further, the use of PowerPoint is so widespread in higher education institutions that for a faculty member to refrain from using PowerPoint is “sometimes seen as a mark of seniority and privilege, like egg on one’s tie” (Parker, 2001 , p. 6, citing a conversation with Stanford University Professor Clifford Nass).

PowerPoint has a dubious reputation. It has been described as “the Viagra of the spoken word ... [and] a wonder pill for flabby lectures” (van Jole, 2000 ); and as something that “... turns clear thinking adults into addled-headed boobs” (Shwom & Keller, 2003 , p. 3). But, if PowerPoint is a drug, Tufte ( 2003a ) argued it ought to be subject to a worldwide product recall, for it had “frequent, serious side effects: it induced stupidity, turned everyone into bores, wasted time, and downgraded the quality and credibility of communication” (para. 1).

PowerPoint technology has become a punching bag that Parker ( 2001 ) alleged has turned its users “into bullet-point dandies” (p. 1). It has been criticized for elevating form over content (Tufte, 2003a , b ); assigned part of the cause for “a general decline in public speaking” (Nunberg, 1999 , p. 330); denounced by academics and by CEOs ... for causing detrimental effects on “dialogue, interaction, and thoughtful consideration of ideas” (Cyphert, 2004 , p. 80); bemoaned as a facilitator of presentations that are “often tediously long and more annoying than Microsoft’s animated paperclip” (Goldkorn, 2004 , para. 4); and accused of “replacing clear thought with unnecessary animations, serious ideas with ten-word bullet points, substance with tacky, confusing style” (Coursey, 2003 , para. 2). Although PowerPoint promises much in terms of delivering content efficiently and offering attractive and dynamic presentations, some critics, such as Stewart ( 2001 ), allege that a frequent outcome is a vacuous monotony.

The preceding critical characterizations of PowerPoint might give the misleading impression that we are about to engage in a harangue of the type: “PowerPoint bad ... non-PowerPoint good.” However, such is not the case. We simply want to go beyond the content of the usual clichéd fare of literature on PowerPoint. This is preponderantly of three major types. First, is the literature which provides technical advice on how to prepare PowerPoint presentations (e.g., Coursey, 2003 ; Jones, 2003 ; Shwom & Keller, 2003 ). Second, is literature which outlines the advantages and disadvantages of PowerPoint. Much of this is in the form of PowerPoint presentations that are accessible through keyword search using Google , such as Bostock ( 2005 )—although some appears in scholarly journals such as Jones ( 2003 ). Third, is literature which takes a titillating swipe at the ostensible evils of PowerPoint or provides an unapologetically jaundiced account of its unsurpassable virtues (e.g., Nunberg, 1999 ; Stewart, 2001 ).

It is our intent to delve more deeply into four matters that deserve reflecting upon by educators and business seminar presenters. We seek to highlight some subtle but important issues that accompany the PowerPoint phenomenon. In doing so, we invoke a wide range of scholarly literature drawn from a variety of disciplines and an array of business periodicals and website newsletters. We address four overlapping issues. First, we review scholarly literature that examines the effectiveness of PowerPoint. Second, we explore how PowerPoint presentations affect the dynamics of pedagogical settings and the general relationship between presenter and presentees. Third, we analyse important aspects of the culture that attaches to PowerPoint technology. Finally, we explore PowerPoint-related issues of visuality, orality and literacy.

This article does not offer a broadly conceived exploration of McLuhan's thesis that “the medium is the message” (McLuhan & Fiore, 1967 ). We do not dwell upon Innis's ( 1991 ) ideas regarding the social nature of new technologies or upon semiotics in order to conceive PowerPoint as another dominating, socially forceful technological mediator of teaching. Although we do not focus on cataloguing how to design more effective PowerPoint slides, we draw attention to the failure of many PowerPoint presenters to ignore fundamental rhetorical principles; and we offer some advice on that matter. We do not engage in what Shwom and Keller ( 2003 ) referred to as “victimology”; that is, to make “PowerPoint the villain that oppresses its users, and almost by default absolve the presenter from taking any personal responsibility for providing significant content and communicating that content clearly” (p.15).

In the past three decades there has been a decisive shift in the media that have been used to communicate messages in educational settings. We have gone from the era of “chalk-and-talk” and occasional flip-charts to overhead transparencies and to PowerPoint slides. And, consistent with Warnick ( 2002 ), we feel it is important to recognize that any “new forms of communicating call for new ways of thinking about communication processes” (p. 264). However, it is important, as well, that we do not become “zealous ... one-eyed prophets who see only what new technologies can do and are incapable of imagining what they will undo ” [italics in original] and that we offer “a dissenting voice ... to moderate the din made by the enthusiastic [technophile] multitudes” (Postman, 1993 , p. 5).

In a sense, we are somewhat akin to Postman's “technological resistance fighter [who] maintains an epistemological and psychic distance from any technology, so that it always appears somewhat strange, never inevitable, never natural” (Postman, 1993 , pp.183–185). We are mindful of the implicit, perhaps largely unnoticed, alteration in “human attention-structures” (Lanham, 1993 ) that pervasive new technologies such as PowerPoint (and its allied information technology and Internet paraphernalia) bring with them. And, of course, as academics we are alert to our obligation to be “disturbers of the peace” (Passmore, 1967 , p. 203) and to “be somewhat reflexive about [our] use of tools, and thus not sound like Microsoft advertising executives” (Rose, 2004 , p. 797).

Our discussion is directed to providing a much-needed tempering of the widespread enthusiasm and excitement for PowerPoint while avoiding a seemingly reflexive anti-technology reaction. We seek to engender a clearer appreciation of whether PowerPoint is a beneficial and efficient educational medium by heightening awareness that the technology of PowerPoint is not an “unparalleled conduit of pedagogically related excellence” and that we need an alternative “‘attention structure’ that does not reify” PowerPoint (Amernic & Craig, 1999 , p. 437).

Is PowerPoint Effective?

In this section we review the limited empirical evidence on whether or not PowerPoint presentations are effective in enriching student learning. However, we refrain from consideration of such core ideas as critical thinking (Nelson, 1994 ), the university's role in the communication of imagination (Whitehead, 1957/[1929] , p. 97), and learning paradigms for undergraduate education (Barr & Tagg, 1995 ). It seems important to review the effectiveness of PowerPoint given its widespread and largely uncritical acceptance, particularly in higher education institutions. This is because, conceivably, PowerPoint might simply lead to a professor's “improvement and/or modernization of their performance in the classroom” (Szabo & Hastings, 2000 , p. 176) without any significant effects on student learning.

Given the widespread adoption of PowerPoint, the small number of authoritative studies of its effectiveness ( n < 20) is surprising. Generally, the available studies lack substance and internal and external validity and adopt rather constrained characterizations of the concept effectiveness . Most have been conducted in the United Kingdom and the U.S. and involve one-site, cross-sectional analyses of small classes that have been taught by the principal researcher (see, for example, Bartsch & Cobern, 2003 ; and the studies reviewed by Szabo & Hastings, 2000 , pp. 176–177). Typically, studies are conducted of classes that have been partitioned into two groups—one taught using lectures and PowerPoint and the other taught using lectures and overhead transparencies. Student attitude responses are gathered usually by means of in-class questionnaire survey methods and need to be scrutinized carefully for unintended bias.

Other studies are based simply on selective reporting of student anecdotes. Some have a self-indulgent quality of “ Hey, look at me, I’m an innovator, and my students like what I am doing .” Others are superficial recollections of instructor experience in using PowerPoint (e.g., Parks, 1999 ). Many studies of student attitudes were conducted before PowerPoint became an ingrained, almost compulsory feature of university lectures. It would not be surprising if many reported results were influenced by a now defunct “novelty factor.” With the passage of time and with heightened exposure to PowerPoint, our recent conversations with students suggest they are now more likely to respond to PowerPoint with an air of resigned, nonchalant ennui.

In the main, the results reported in scholarly journal articles indicate that students like to be taught using PowerPoint (perhaps because of its novelty and the availability of printed handouts of PowerPoint slides) and think that PowerPoint presentations are entertaining, enhance clarity, and aid recall of subject matter. There is little consistent evidence, however, to show that teaching with PowerPoint leads to significantly better learning and significantly better grades than teaching by more conventional methods. A majority of studies shows that use of PowerPoint is not associated with a significant improvement in student grades. For example, Rankin and Hoaas ( 2001 ) examined the effect of PowerPoint presentations on student grades in four classes of students in an introductory economics course taught by one instructor, at one institution, in two semesters. “Each semester one group of students was taught using PowerPoint slides and the other taught without slides to serve as a control group ...[but there was] ...no significant effect in terms of student performance” (p. 113). Results such as this seem curious in view of the speed and conviction with which PowerPoint has been embraced by educators.

Some other empirical studies are more generous, but are unpublished and unreviewed (e.g., Evans, 1998 ), or have significant methodological problems (e.g., Harknett & Cobane, 1997 ), or have untested assumptions (e.g., Lowry, 1999 ). Generally, the results of these studies point to the benefits of PowerPoint on student performance. For example, Lowry ( 1999 ) concluded that classes taught using PowerPoint “achieved better grades than the traditional-lecture cohort (51.8 and 51.9 versus 43.5%) ... and students exposed to PowerPoint lecturing had a positive attitude towards the method” (pp. 20–21).

Bartsch and Cobern ( 2003 , p. 78) provided the following good review of empirical evidence regarding the effectiveness of PowerPoint and computer presentations:

Overall research indicates that students prefer PowerPoint type presentations from transparencies (Cassady, 1998 ; Perry & Perry, 1998 ; Susskind & Gurien, 1999 ; West, 1997 ). Unfortunately, information on whether computer presentations improve student performance is much less clear. Several studies point to the idea that graphics improve student recall (ChanLin, 1998 , 2000 ; Lowry, 1999 ; Szabo & Hastings, 2000 , Exp. 2). However, many courses that adopted multimedia presentations have not shown a corresponding increase in student performance (Stoloff, 1995 ; Susskind & Gurien, 1999 ; Szabo & Hastings, 2000 . Exp. 1 and 3; West, 1997 ). In fact, one study demonstrated a decrease in student performance when the instructor switched from transparencies to PowerPoint (Bartlett, Cheng, & Strough, 2000 ).

In the study by Szabo and Hastings ( 2000 ), over 90% of students said that PowerPoint “is more attention capturing than the traditional method of lecturing,” and 85% found “PowerPoint lectures are more interesting than traditional lectures” (p. 179). They concluded that:

PowerPoint lectures, at least in some circumstances, mainly add to the entertainment rather than to the education of the students ... Apart from possible benefits on recall, no significant advantages to PowerPoint lecturing were found ... students like PowerPoint as a lecturing method. Their preference for PowerPoint lectures, in contrast to their beliefs, is not accompanied by better academic performance (p. 186).

Although students found PowerPoint entertaining, Szabo and Hastings ( 2000 ) noted aptly that “the challenge in the new millennium is not to entertain students ... but to improve or to facilitate learning” (p. 187). Such an improvement will not come easily if Parker ( 2001 ) is to be believed. He contended that presenters are concentrating more on “formatting slides—because it’s more fun to do than concentrate on what [they're] going to say” (Parker, 2001 , p. 5). A major challenge facing educators will be to convert the generally positive disposition of students to PowerPoint into significantly better learning and performance.

The Dynamics of the Pedagogical Setting

It is important to reflect upon the epistemology of our pedagogy. We live in a pedagogic realm in which the lecture has been regarded as “an accomplishment—bringing together a very particular constellation of speaker, space, technology, audience and attention” (Crang, 2003 , p. 242). In the lecture setting, the social roles, expectations, and power relations at play merit our reflection. The encompassing “performative aspects” of PowerPoint and how they “lend authority to the speaker” (Driver, 2003 , p. 229) are deserving of reflection too.

Accordingly, we now explore three aspects of the interaction between PowerPoint technology and its “spaces and audiences” (Driver, 2003 , p. 229)—first, whether or not PowerPoint serves as a crutch for many presenters, and second, whether or not it has a bad effect on the message by becoming “a tool to separate the presenter from the audience and the message” (Coursey, 2003 , para. 5). Third, we also explore the thesis that the visuality of PowerPoint presentations (which should enrich the message) is becoming THE message and that less of an audience's attention is being applied to a speaker's discussion of relevant content (DuFrene & Lehman, 2004 , p. 84).

There are divergent views about whether the teacher or presenter using PowerPoint is still the main actor and a Socratic-type figure in a learning play. One view is that “PowerPoint is teacher-centred. It puts the instructor at the center of the action” (Creed, 1997 ). As such, (s)he is a narrator tasked with framing the message or performance, both literally and perceptually. Opposed to this, is the view that the use of PowerPoint has reduced the role of the presenter to that of a stagehand (Blokzijl & Naeff, 2004 ) in which (s)he has been “effaced” by the visuality of the PowerPoint slide show (Crang, 2003 , p. 243). Consistent with this view, the role of the lecturer or presenter has changed: (s)he is a necessary, but annoying distraction, providing Muzak accompaniment to the lecture by means of an often “disembodied voice” (Crang, 2003 , p. 243). Indeed, Nunberg ( 1999 , p. 330) drew attention to the argument that the presenter is no longer needed because PowerPoint slides “have begun to take on a life of their own, as if they no longer needed talking heads to speak for them.” In this vein, Tufte ( 2003a ) argued that “rather than supplementing a presentation, [PowerPoint] has become a substitute for it” (p. 3).

Our view is that whether a PowerPoint presenter is the centre of attention or more of a stagehand will be a function of the communication ability of the presenter. Good presenters will most likely still be the centre of attention, using PowerPoint appropriately as a valuable communication aid to buttress their rhetoric. Poor presenters, such as nervous freshman students making their first assessable class presentation, will most likely be stagehands, with PowerPoint used as a dominating prop and their visual presence barely discernible.

What are the implications of interposing a PowerPoint presentation between an instructor and students? When we taught without PowerPoint or led a case discussion without PowerPoint or acted Socratic-like without PowerPoint, our relationship with students was unmediated and more human, more direct, less pre-meditated and less structured. The pedagogy involved depended on the particular situation, the process of interchange, the verbal and nonverbal communication, the repartee, the facial expressions, and the multitude of things that unfold during unmediated human relationships and dialogue. These are all “immediacy behaviours” which include such non-verbal actions as “eye contact, smiling, movement, adopting relaxed body positions, vocal expressiveness” and have been found to have a positive effect on student learning (see Hartnett, Römcke, & Yap, 2003 , p. 315). But when we subcontract our teaching to PowerPoint presentations, often we cannot see the faces of students. The ambient light is often low, and the focus of students is on the PowerPoint screen. It is not as easy to engage in effective “immediacy behaviours” with students, person-to-person, and to interest them vitally in the pursuit of knowledge.

Are educators at risk of falling into Freire's ( 1993 ) “banking education” trap by implicitly regarding education as an activity in which students simply withdraw dollops of something called “knowledge” in much the same way that money is withdrawn from a bank account? As a community of educators and students, are we acquiescing to an unthinking acceptance of PowerPoint's imposition of a conduit metaphor to frame (educational) communication in a way in which “language transfers thought to others” using words as a conduit (Reddy, 1993 , p. 167)? However, note that Reddy ( 1993 ) also cautioned that considering communication as a conduit metaphor “is leading us down a technological and social blind alley. That blind alley is mass communications systems coupled with mass neglect of the internal, human systems responsible for nine-tenths of the work in communicating” (p. 188). In this article we do not pursue the possible connection between the widespread deployment of PowerPoint in education and the implicit framing of educational communication by the conduit metaphor, but, at least according to Reddy, this merits further study.

What do we do if an unplanned, yet fruitful, discussion demands that a PowerPoint presentation be stopped dead in its tracks? Can we allow conversation and discussion to meander down a road with no known ultimate destination? Is it possible to ever discontinue a PowerPoint presentation or, in the best tradition of the theatre, must the “show go on?” Must a pre-planned schedule be followed rigidly because of an unwritten convention of PowerPoint that “no matter what, get through all the slides.” Or perhaps, even more chillingly, has the PowerPoint slideshow become the curriculum?

Rhetorical Elements

Teachers, public speakers, and business seminar presenters are rhetoricians, engaged in acts of persuasion: they seek to persuade or to educate, and to use PowerPoint as a visual aid to make “the logical structure of an argument more transparent” (Parker, 2001 , citing Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of psychology, Steven Pinker, p. 6). Yet the knowledge most have of how to use PowerPoint effectively extends little beyond the general guidelines for using visual aids that have been outlined by Berko, Wolvin and Ray ( 1997 ) and Andrews and Baird ( 2000 ). Few lecturers or business seminar presenters seem adept at melding their verbal oratory with “visuality as an element of rhetorical invention” (Cyphert, 2004 , p. 81). And, as pointed out by Parker ( 2001 ), “instead of human contact” PowerPoint gives us a “human display ... we present to each other, instead of discussing” (p. 5, italics added). We exacerbate this problem by committing the “sin of triple delivery, where precisely the same text is seen on the screen, spoken aloud, and printed on the handout in front of you” (Parker, 2001 , p. 5).

There is a strong argument that the problems of PowerPoint arise from the contempt of many presenters for fundamental rhetorical principles and from their failure to ask such questions: “What does my audience need to know? What point am I trying to make? How do I make that point clearly, thoroughly, transparently? And is the organization of information effective for making my point clear and understandable?” (Shwom & Keller, 2003 , p. 4). Those who overlook these principles deserve “banishing into the wilderness of incoherence [because they] often lose their way in a thicket of points and sub-points [and compel a reader to] work too hard to decipher meaning” (Shwom & Keller, 2003 , pp. 4–5). One key rhetorical principle was proposed by Shwom and Keller ( 2003 ) for following by PowerPoint authors:

On each bullet point slide ... address only one main idea: a single discrete category with sub-items consistently related to that category. Do not use bullet points to present a sequence of ideas. In other words, use bullets to present inductive reasoning, not deductive reasoning (p. 8).

Additionally, many PowerPoint presenters fail to appreciate how rhetorical culture has been changed by PowerPoint communication. According to Cyphert ( 2005 ):

The whole notion of having a linear outline is actually a holdover from some pretty traditional—some would say archaic or even xenophobic—rhetorical presumptions. The sad thing is that PowerPoint offers tremendous tools for a speaker, but very, very few get past those dad-gummed bullet points. (response to question 10).

The linearity of PowerPoint and its pesky bullet points hold the prospect of seeming “too slow and boring to students used to MTV, instant messaging and MP3s” (Delaney, 2005 , p. R4, citing Tom Wilson, a technology-integration specialist at Hopkins High School, Minnetonka, Minnesota). Indeed, it suggests that Reddy's ( 1993 ) conduit metaphor has been given new breath by PowerPoint and is alive and well.

The metaphors that are associated with the use of PowerPoint merit reflection because the stance educators adopt with regard to the advantages and disadvantages of PowerPoint probably reflect the metaphors that imperceptibly fashion their attitudes. In assessing the way to use PowerPoint, it is important for educators to contemplate the fundamental metaphors that define their approach to teaching. We can identify four major metaphors that influence the way faculty members conceive teaching, by drawing on Fox ( 1983 ) and Lucas ( 2002 ). These are described in Amernic and Craig ( 2004 , p. 357) as:

the transfer conception: knowledge is a commodity to be transferred from one vessel to another, a concept consistent with Reddy's conduit metaphor ( 1993 );

the shaping conception: teaching is usually directed to developing the minds of students;

the travelling conception: the teacher leads students into new territory and, in doing so, gains new perspectives, too; and

the growing conception: the teacher is a nurturer.

Most users of PowerPoint appear to conceive their goals as educators to involve merely a one-way transmission of knowledge, rather than to promote the construction of knowledge and the analysis and synthesis of knowledge (Ramsden, 1992 ). This transfer, transportation, or conduit model of communication seems to fashion thinking by educators about PowerPoint: they conceive PowerPoint presentations as moving meaning across space in a way in which “the delivery, as opposed to the formulation of meaning” (Angus, 1998 , p. 21) is regarded as most important.

A major pedagogical issue with PowerPoint presentations is that receivers are “passively engaged” rather than “actively engaged.” Jones ( 2003 ) discussed the danger of making PowerPoint presentations available to students. Such practice is said to encourage “students to sit passively through the session since they may perceive they have ‘got the notes’” (p. 5). Tufte ( 2003b ) outlined the problems involved very strongly. They are summarized by Simons ( 2005 ) as follows:

It [PowerPoint] locks presenters into a linear, slide-by-slide format that discourages free association and creative thinking. It imposes artificial and potentially misleading hierarchies on information ... breaks information and data into fragments, making it more difficult to see the logical relationships between different sets of data. It encourages over-simplification by asking presenters to summarize key concepts in as few words as possible—e.g., bullet points—which can lead to gross generalizations, imprecise logic, superficial reasoning and, quite often, misleading conclusions. It imposes an authoritarian presenter/audience relationship rather than facilitating a give-and-take exchange of ideas and information. (p.5)

Some might argue that Tufte's case is exaggerated, that PowerPoint presentations can be paused for “contemplative effect, and they can serve as a springboard for conversation” (Cyphert, 2005 , question 13). Nonetheless, many PowerPoint presenters seem to embrace the transfer conception of education, in preference to the shaping, travelling, and growing conceptions. “If everyone has set their remarks in stone ahead of time (all using the same templates) then there is little room for comments of one to build upon another, or for a new idea to arise collaboratively ... Homogeneity is great for milk, but not for ideas” (Norvig, 2003 , p. 344). Educators using PowerPoint should give greater emphasis to working as partners with students, in designing learning activities with them, so that they encourage students to identify new ways of thinking for themselves. Most importantly, therefore, educators should reflect upon the explicit and implicit metaphors that help form the foundation of the cognitive world that is drawn upon in their use of PowerPoint.

PowerPoint Culture

In this section we examine three aspects of the “PowerPoint culture” in contemporary higher education institutions: power and ideology, cognition and psychology, and production influences.

Power and Ideology

What is the power of PowerPoint? This is an important question. The extent to which a PowerPoint presenter is in a position of power is often underestimated. Rose ( 2003 , p. 218, 2004 ) outlined five reasons why, in displaying slides, an academic has the potential to be a “powerful producer of knowledge.”

First, classes are given in spaces, such as lecture halls, that “encourage the practice of attention ... and in which attention is demanded” (Rose, 2003 , p. 218). We see this in the strong social convention governing audiences at PowerPoint presentations—to focus attention forward at the video screen and be quiet. Second, the display of slides is a powerful activity. Slides are often shown embedded in a luminescent square of light, surrounded by darkness. This seems to disallow any discussion of their truth status—and it privileges them by imposing a well-demarcated frame. Third, there is also a redirecting of the traditional flow of discourse in the lecture: the speaker “often seems compelled to turn towards the screen and to talk to the projection rather than to the audience” (Rose 2003 , p. 215). Fourth, slides “usually work to bestow authority on their expositor ... [who] mediates between the audience and the image by explaining it to them, and the apparent truth of the [slide] produces a truth-effect in the [expositor's] words as well” (Rose, 2003 , p. 216). Fifth, PowerPoint presentations “are not shown or seen the same way regardless of where they are screened; the way the [presenter] presents—and their audience views—images differently depend[s] on the location of their display ... [and] the speech and gestures” of the presenter (Rose, 2003 , p. 217).

An important aspect is the “visual uniformity” of PowerPoint. This may have ideological associations with the culture of its corporate creator, Microsoft—for example, in the subtle cognitive impacts of the aesthetic layout judgments made in default settings (Matless, 2003 ).

Cognition and Psychology

Ideally, lecturers should employ the most effective means to convey their message to students. But research into the effects and effectiveness of PowerPoint technology is rather poor. We are hampered, for example, by an underdeveloped understanding of the level of persuasiveness and psychological impact of PowerPoint as a new visual technology.

A lecture, like a court trial, ought to be regarded as a “search for truth and as a rhetorical contest” (Feigenson & Dunn, 2003 , p. 111). Consequently, there is a strong need for empirical research to address how various PowerPoint presentations have facilitative or prejudicial effects on audiences and how those audiences explain the perceptual, cognitive and emotional reasons for such effects (Feigenson & Dunn, 2003 , pp. 111–112). Currently, PowerPoint presenters have only a rudimentary appreciation of the conditions under which the visual technology they are using helps them to achieve their rhetorical aims.

However, research should focus not just on the visual technology involved. We need to understand also our audience's “perceptual, cognitive, and emotional capabilities, expectations, and habits” and to explore the relationships between audience and “visual technology” and “manipulations of that technology” in a better fashion (Feigenson & Dunn, 2003 , p. 112). In this vein a visual social semiotics approach, involving a study of signs, would help us to understand “how text and images work together to make meaning together for readers/users ... [and to] better understand the rhetorical, meaning-making potential” of PowerPoint presentations and imagery and make them more effective (Harrison, 2003 , p. 47). All this underscores the potential cognitive risks for both PowerPoint presenters and PowerPoint presentees. The cognitive world of both educators and students changes, perhaps radically, when PowerPoint becomes the default mode of discourse. We should at least attempt to become aware of the possibilities, both good and not-so-good, that this raises.

Production Influences

PowerPoint can be very subverting. Lecturers seem to spend disproportionate amounts of time mesmerized in tinkering with how to present their lecture—agonizing over the choice of design template, color scheme, page layout, and mode of slide transition. That is, they become engrossed in performing the production activities associated with the Microsoft PowerPoint software application rather than concentrate on how they will participate in “uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning” (Whitehead, 1957/[1929] , p. 93). We need to be alert to the possibility that this production labour effort will interplay with the increasingly hyperactive and mediated demands on university faculty time (e.g., via email and the Internet) to preclude any semblance of a reflective academic life.

Orality, Visuality and Literacy

PowerPoint should be recognized as a new communication medium that is fundamentally changing the nature and dynamic of how we teach. For over four hundred years, as Postman ( 1993 ) noted, teaching settings have been characterized by a fine balance between two forms of learning: orality and the printed word . According to Postman ( 1993 ) orality fostered “gregariousness” and stressed “group learning, cooperation, and a sense of social responsibility”; and the printed word fostered “introspection and isolation” and stressed “individualized learning, competition, and personal autonomy” (p.17). Nonetheless, while teachers have tended to emphasize the visuality of print, they “have allowed orality its place in the classroom, and have therefore achieved a kind of pedagogical peace between these two forms of learning, so that what is valuable in each can be maximized” (Postman, 1993 , p. 17). What PowerPoint seems to have done is to disturb this pedagogical peace.

Orality, or at least, student-generated orality, seems to have been downgraded by the uni-directional nature of the discourse which accompanies most PowerPoint presentations. That discourse often has the hallmarks of a voice-over accompaniment to a visual display, usually of graphically enhanced printed words. The instructor risks being relegated from a centre stage role, to that of an incidental stagehand.

The use of projection to enhance the visuality of teaching has a long tradition in some disciplines: instructors in geography and art history have used 35 mm slides for about 100 years (Rose, 2003 , 2004 ). But the visual learning widely believed to be enhanced by PowerPoint seems to assume a false homogeneity: that PowerPoint is an appropriate, effective and amenable aid to learning, irrespective of discipline, learning objectives, and type of learner. For example, the visuality of PowerPoint seems much less likely to be amenable in teaching people to converse in foreign languages.

The form of learning we are gravitating to with PowerPoint is one of televisuality. This may be quite appropriate in the early 21st century. Young students of the “tech-savvy Play Station 2 generation” (Delaney, 2005 , p. R4) will be acculturated to such a mode. Many, if not most, will have been raised in homes bristling with the technology of television, interactive video games, DVD players, computers, and cell phones. The brevity and prevalence of PowerPoint's bullet points, abbreviations, and acronyms will resonate sympathetically with them, as they are likely to be voracious users of cell phone text messaging. Indeed, they would probably even find such use GR8 THK U. (This is commonly used Special Messaging Service [SMS] text for “Great, thank you.”) But this all comes at a price—the downgrading of orality and print.

There is also a profound impact on literacy. PowerPoint slides are often devoid of paragraphs, pronouns, punctuation, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs and articles. The obligation to form full sentences has become optional and the spelling of polysyllabic words has become a lost art in a sea of PowerPoint-induced abbreviations. (A similar criticism could be made of the use of overhead transparency slides. But we contend that the effect is much more pronounced with PowerPoint.) “The world is condensed into a few upbeat slides, with seven or so words on a line, seven lines on a slide” (Parker, 2001 , p. 2); and it is “a world where any complex thought must be broken into seven-word chunks, with colorful blobs between them” (Norvig, 2003 , p. 343). The use of language is imprecise and deserving of banishment into a “wilderness of incoherence,” for it causes audiences to “often lose their way in a thicket of points and sub-points” in “lists gone amuck” (Shwom & Keller, 2003 , pp. 4–5).

Parker ( 2001 , p. 6, citing Nass) argued that PowerPoint “empowers the provider of simple content ... but risks squeezing out the provider of process—that is to say, the rhetorician, the storyteller, the poet, the person whose thoughts cannot be arranged in the shape of a [PowerPoint] slide.” Parker ( 2001 ) recounted a telling anecdotal confession by Professor Nass about the capacity of PowerPoint to influence curriculum choices:

I hate to admit this but I actually removed a book from my syllabus last year because I couldn't figure out how to PowerPoint it. It's a lovely book called ‘Interface Culture,’ by Steven Johnson, but it's very discursive; the charm of it is the throwaways. When I read this book, I thought, my head's filled with ideas, and now I've got to write out exactly what those ideas are, and they're not neat. [Parker then observes that Nass] couldn't get the book into bullet points; every time he put something down, he realized that it wasn't quite right. Eventually, he abandoned the attempt, and instead of a lecture, he gave his students a recommendation. He told them it was a good book, urged them to read it, and moved on to the next bullet point (p. 6).

PowerPoint also effects how we expose students to a curriculum. Norvig ( 2003 ) argued that PowerPoint “makes it harder to have an open exchange between presenter and audience, to convey ideas that do not neatly fit into outline format” (p. 344). And Creed ( 1997 , Classroom assessment) makes several apposite points: first, “You may get less feedback from the class because your eyes and theirs are on the screen rather than looking at each other;” second, students don't have a chance to synthesize what they've heard; and third, the emphasis is on the quality of your presentation rather than your students' learning. Indeed, because of the facility for PowerPoint to be distributed in handout form at the commencement of classes and for PowerPoint presentations to be placed on the Web, students no longer need to listen carefully in class. Indeed, if lecturers simply read their PowerPoint presentations, there seems little point in them attending lectures at all.

All users of PowerPoint should respond to Postman's ( 1993 ) call and pause to reflect about any new technology, such as PowerPoint, and how it affects, however imperceptibly, their engagement with what and how they teach. They should engage in conversations and critique of new technologies, rather than to accept them blithely and unquestioningly.

As a society we should be mindful that PowerPoint, in concert with allied computer and Internet-based technology, is having a profound effect on higher education. PowerPoint is not merely a benign means of facilitating what educators have always done. Rather, it is changing much (perhaps most) of how we engage with our students and the disciplines which we profess. We should be curious as to why this is so. We should be eager to understand the assumptions and metaphors that subtly infuse PowerPoint. We should also be more aware of the culture, customs, and behaviour that are dragged along with PowerPoint and how they affect the way we think about our students, our audiences, ourselves, and our disciplines.

Amernic, J. H., & Craig, R. J. (1999). The internet in undergraduate management education: A concern for neophytes among metaphors. Prometheus, 17, 437–450.

Article   Google Scholar  

Amernic, J., & Craig, R. (2004). An agenda for the reform of accounting education in the post-Enron era: Moving accounting ‘out of the shadows.’ Abacus, 40, 342–378.

Andrews, P. H., & Baird, J. E. J. (2000). Communication for business and the professions. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Google Scholar  

Angus, I. (1998). The materiality of expression: Harold Innis' communication theory and the discursive turn in the human sciences. Canadian Journal of Communication, 23, 9–29.

Barr, R. B., & Tagg, J. (1995). From teaching to learning: A new paradigm for undergraduate education. Change , 13–25 Nov/Dec.

Bartlett, R. M., Cheng, S., & Strough, J. (2000). Multimedia versus traditional course instruction in undergraduate introductory psychology. Poster presentation, Annual Conference of the American Psychological Association, Washington, DC.

Bartsch, R. A., & Cobern, K. M. (2003). Effectiveness of PowerPoint presentations in lectures. Computers and Education, 41, 77–86.

Berko, R., Wolvin, A., & Ray, R. (1997). Business communication in a changing world. New York, NY: St. Martins.

Blokzijl, W., & Naeff, R. (2004). The instructor as stagehand: Dutch student responses to PowerPoint. Business Communication Quarterly, 67, 70–77.

Bostock, S. (2005). Using PowerPoint for Teaching . Retrieved on January 19, 2005 from www.keele.ac.uk/depts/cs/Stephen_Bostock/talwt/materials/powerpoint-for-teaching.ppt .

Cassady, J. C. (1998). Student and instructor perceptions of the efficacy of computer-aided lectures in undergraduate university courses. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 19 , 175–189.

ChanLin, L.-J. (1998). Animation to teach students of different knowledge levels. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 25 , 166–175.

ChanLin, L.-J. (2000). Attributes of animation for learning scientific knowledge. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 27 , 228–238.

Coursey, D. (2003, September 10). What’s wrong with PowerPoint—And how to fix it? AnchorDesk . Retrieved December 8, 2004 from http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stroies/story/o,10738,2914637,00.hml .

Crang, M. (2003). The hair in the gate: Visuality and geographical knowledge. Antipode , 35 , 238–243.

Creed, T. (1997, May). PowerPoint, No! Cyberspace, Yes. The National Teaching and Learning Forum, 6, (4). Retrieved January 4, 2005 from http://www.ntlf.com/html/pi/9705/creed_1.htm .

Cyphert, D. (2005). A clash of rhetorical cultures: Q & A with Dale Cyphert, Ph.D. Retrieved on January 3, 2005 from www.sociablemedia.com .

Cyphert, D. (2004). The problems of PowerPoint: Visual aid or visual rhetoric? Business Communication Quarterly, 67 , 80–83.

Delaney, K. (2005, January 17, p. R4.). Teaching Tools: How do you communicate with students who have grown up with technology? Schools are looking to technology for the answer. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved on January 18, 2005 from http://proquest.umi.com/ .

Driver, F. (2003). On geography as a visual discipline. Antipode, 35 , 227–231.

DuFrene, D. D., & Lehman, C. M. (2004). Concept, content, construction, and contingencies: Getting the horse before the PowerPoint cart. Business Communication Quarterly, 67, 84–88.

Evans, L. (1998). Preliminary study: Lectures versus PowerPoint 4.0. Retrieved on January 4, 2005 from http://www.kcmetro.cc.mo.us/longview/lect_ppt.HTM .

Feigenson, N., & Dunn, M. A. (2003). New visual technologies in court: Directions for research. Law and Human Behavior, 27, 109–126.

Fox, D. (1983). Personal theories of teaching. Studies in Higher Education, 8 , 151–163.

Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. B. Ramos, Trans.). New York, NY: Continuum (Original work published 1972).

Goldkorn, J. (2004, October). The curse of PowerPoint. That’s Beijing. Retrieved on December 8, 2004 from www.thatsmagazines.com/features.index.asp .

Harknett, R. J., & Cobane, C. T. (1997). Introducing instructional technology to international relations. Political Science and Politics, 30 , 496–500.

Hartnett, N., Römcke, J., & Yap, C. (2003). Recognizing the importance of instruction style to students’ performance: Some observations from laboratory research—A research note. Accounting Education, 12 , 313–331.

Harrison, C. (2003). Understanding how still images make meaning. Technical Communication, 50, 46–60.

Innis, H. A. (1991). The bias of communication. Toronto, ON, Canada: University of Toronto Press.

Jones, A. M. (2003). The use and abuse of PowerPoint in teaching and learning in the life sciences: A personal view. BEE-j 2. Retrieved on February 23, 2006 from http://www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/journal/vol2/beej-2-3.pdf .

Lanham, R. (1993). The electronic word . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Lowry, R. B. (1999). Electronic presentation of lectures—Effect upon student performance. University Chemistry Education, 3 , 18–21.

Lucas, U. (2002). Contradictions and uncertainties: Lecturers' conceptions of teaching introductory accounting. British Accounting Review, 34, 183–203.

Matless, D. (2003). Gestures around the visual. Antipode, 35, 222–226.

McLuhan, M., & Fiore, Q. (1967). The medium is the message. New York, NY: Random House.

Nelson, C. E. (1994). Critical thinking and collaborative learning . New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 59 , 45–58 San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Norvig, P. (2003, August 2). PowerPoint: Shot with its own bullets. The Lancet, 362 , 343–344.

Nunberg, G. (1999, December 20). The trouble with PowerPoint. Fortune, 330–331.

Parker, I. (2001, May 28). Absolute PowerPoint. The New Yorker, 77 (13), 76–87. Retrieved on January 10, 2005 from http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/lss/intime/AbsolutePPT.pdf , 1–6.

Parks, R. P. (1999). Macro principles, PowerPoint, and the internet: Four years of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Journal of Economic Education, 30, 200–209.

Passmore, J. (1967). On teaching to be critical. In R. S. Peters, (Ed.), The concept of education (pp. 192–212). London, England: Routledge, Kegan Paul.

Perry, T., & Perry, L. A. (1998). University students' attitudes towards multimedia presentations. British Journal of Educational Technology, 29, 375–377.

Postman, N. (1993). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. New York, NY: Random House.

Ramsden, P. (1992). Learning to teach in higher education. London, England: Routledge.

Rankin, E. L., & Hoaas, D. J. (2001). The use of PowerPoint and student performance. Atlantic Economic Journal, 29, 113.

Reddy, M. J. (1993). The conduit metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about language. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (pp. 164–201). Cambridge, England and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Rose, G. (2003). On the need to ask how, exactly, is geography ‘visual?’ Antipode, 35, 212–221.

Rose, G. (2004). On the importance of asking the right questions, or what is the power of PowerPoint, exactly? Antipode, 36, 795–797.

Shwom, B. L., & Keller, K. P. (2003). The great man has spoken. Now what do I do? A response to Edward R. Tufte's “The cognitive style of PowerPoint.” Communication Insight, 1, 1–15. Retrieved on December 17, 2004 from www.communipartners.com .

Simons, T. (2005). Does PowerPoint make you stupid? Presentations, 18 (3). Retrieved on November 21, 2005 from http://g;lobal.factiva.com/ .

Stewart, T. A. (2001, February 5). Ban it now! Friends don't let friends use PowerPoint. Fortune, 143, 210.

Stoloff, M. (1995). Teaching physiological psychology in a multimedia classroom. Teaching of Psychology, 22 , 138–141.

Susskind, J., & Gurien, R. A. (1999). Do computer-generated presentations influence psychology students’ learning and motivation to succeed? Poster session, annual convention of the American Psychological Society, Denver.

Szabo, A., & Hastings, N. (2000). Using IT in the undergraduate classroom. Should we replace the blackboard with PowerPoint? Computers and Education, 35 , 175–187.

Tufte, E. R. (2003a, September). PowerPoint is Evil. Wired . Retrieved on December 8, 2004 from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html .

Tufte, E. R. (2003b). The cognitive style of PowerPoint. Cheshire, CT: Graphics.

Van Jole, F. (2000, November). Het PowerPoint denken. FEM Ide Week. Retrieved on February 23, 2006 from http://www.2525.com/archive2/020928.html .

Warnick, B. (2002). Analogues to argument: New media and literacy in a posthuman era. Argumentation and Advocacy, 38, 262–270.

West, R. L. (1997). Multimedia presentations in large classes: A field experiment . Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Society, Washington, DC.

Whitehead A. N. 1957/[1929]. The aims of education and other essays . New York, NY: Free Press.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

National Graduate School of Management, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

Russell J. Craig

Rotman School of Management, The University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

Joel H. Amernic

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Russell J. Craig .

Additional information

Russel craig.

received his B.Com., M.Com. and Ph.D. from the University of Newcastle, Australia. He is Professor in the National Graduate School of Management at The Australian National University.

Joel Amernic

received his B.Sc., and M.B.A. from the University of Toronto, where he is a Professor in the Rotman School of Management.

Both authors are long-term collaborators with common research interests in management education, the accountability discourse of CEOs, and various aspects of corporate accounting and financial reporting, including the use of accounting data in employment relations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0 ), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Craig, R.J., Amernic, J.H. PowerPoint Presentation Technology and the Dynamics of Teaching. Innov High Educ 31 , 147–160 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-006-9017-5

Download citation

Published : 02 August 2006

Issue Date : October 2006

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-006-9017-5

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• technology in teaching
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

Quick links

• Make a Gift
• Directories

Teaching with Powerpoint

Pedagogical considerations for powerpoint.

PowerPoint is a presentation program. It automatically creates a sense of formality in a classroom. Many students respond to PowerPoint the same way they respond to a lecture. They tend to be quieter, more inclined to listen than to talk, and even may take notes. If you desire a more relaxed classroom atmosphere, some of the options described later in this chapter offer suggestions for reducing the formality of PowerPoint.

Bridging with PowerPoint

Using PowerPoint when you are in the seminar style classroom can create a sense of technological continuation between the classrooms. You might want to incorporate some of the material produced in the LAN into a PowerPoint presentation.

When and How to Use PowerPoint

How much you use PowerPoint will vary based on your particular teaching style. The next section provides a list of suggestions for incorporating PowerPoint into daily instruction. Keep in mind that using PowerPoint requires planning; you need to prepare your presentation in advance.

You will find detailed instructions on how to use PowerPoint in the  CIC Student Guide  portion of this manual.

Options for Using Power Point

Option 1: illustrated lectures.

When giving a lecture or mini-lecture, you can use PowerPoint to highlight key points in your presentation. The visual format of PowerPoint allows you to easily project timelines, and images. You can also use PowerPoint to provide an outline of your talk, without writing on the board.

Option 2: Instructions

You can use PowerPoint to present instructions for a paper assignment or class activity. The sequential order of the slides lends itself to providing step-by-step instructions.

Option 3: Paper Proposals

Students can present their paper proposals or outlines to the class via PowerPoint. For example, a student could present his or her claim on one slide, following by an outline for the paper on another. Or the student could combine the table feature to present two possible outlines for the paper side by side.

SAMPLE ASSIGNMENT (Kimberlee Gillis-Bridges)

This assignment gives students the option of using PowerPoint.

The proposal assignment allows you to develop a tentative thesis, pose arguments related to this thesis, identify potential evidence and consider organizational strategies for your comparison/contrast essay. You may submit the proposal in a word-processed format, or you may use PowerPoint. You may also integrate images into the proposal, particularly as you discuss shots and scenes you will analyze in the essay. In completing the proposal, you will produce a roadmap to guide your drafting process.

Although the proposal can take a variety of formats, it should include the following components:

• A tentative title for the essay.
• The names of the films you will compare/contrast.
• The theme you plan to address and an indication of how you plan to narrow the theme.
• A tentative thesis that addresses the significance of the films’ similarities and differences.
• An overview of the similarities and differences you will address in the essay.
• A description of the shots or scenes you plan to analyze, with notes on the arguments you plan to make about these shots and scenes.
• An indication of the order in which you plan to make your points. You may do this in the form of a list, a descriptive outline, or any other format that works for you.
• A list of any questions you have regarding the assignment or your ideas-in-progress.

While I have listed the elements you should include, you can address them in an order you wish. For example, you may integrate the overview of similarities and differences and the listing of shots/scenes into the outline of points. You may also incorporate anything else that will help you draft the essay (excerpts from your electronic responses; quotations from lecture, readings, or others’ electronic responses; notes taken during in-class presentations, etc.).

Option 4: Discussion Prompts

You can use PowerPoint to project a discussion prompt to the class. This technique is particularly suited to a short writing exercise. Since the prompt is already legibly written on the slide, students can refer back to it easily as they complete a writing activity prior to discussion. You can then use PowerPoint to project bulletin board or other class materials relevant to the prompt and/or follow up questions.

Note : projecting a quote from a Bulletin Board discussion followed by a discussion question is a simple and effective way to bridge discussions when moving between rooms.

Option 5: Test or Quiz Answers

PowerPoint gives you the ability to project a test or quiz question, discuss it with the class, and then project the answer below or alongside the question. You can also use PowerPoint to project student responses to questions.

Option 6: Grammar Exercises

You can use PowerPoint to grammatical instructions, samples from student papers, and revised sentences, among other possibilities. The ability to reveal the text on the screen a section at a time allows students to clearly see the editing process.

Option 7: Student Projects

Most of the options described above are also suited to student presentations. You can require students to use PowerPoint for individual or group presentations or you can give students the option of using PowerPoint. You may be surprised how many students will take the option.

SAMPLE EXERCISE: USING POWERPOINT FOR STUDENT-LED GROUP DISCUSSION OF TEXTS (Laurie George)

An excellent pedagogical means of keeping class discussion lively, the discussant pool diverse, and the selected texts intellectually engaging is to assign a pair or a group of students to lead a discussion on a given text. The exercise can include close reading exclusively, or it can include the researching, summarizing, and presenting of one or two critical articles on that text.

The technique works particularly well if presenters are required to quote short passages from the articles on PowerPoint slides and to provide summaries of whatever quoted—a requirement that reinforces in each class session the practice of never allowing a secondary quoted source to stand alone without critical interpretation.

The technique also works well if portions of class sessions are set aside to allow students to research articles (on campus, via the UW Libraries English Research Guide  as well as to allow adequate preparation time for presenters to confer and design their PowerPoint drafts—best to set limits on these, say, five or eight slides, as presenters rarely gauge time accurately and always have more to say during the discussion than they initially anticipate.

Also helpful is to require that the last PowerPoint screen include at least two but no more than four questions about the textual subject under discussion/ and or the textual relevance of the articles summarized.

Here’s an example from a senior seminar discussion of Ali Smith’s novel Hotel World :

Below is an explanation I included within my syllabus about using PowerPoint as an aid to discussion leading; the course was a senior seminar that focused on variations of voice in literary texts:

For Group or Solo Presentation (Discussion Leading) Projects

Everyone in class needs to take responsibility for leading a class discussion about a particular aspect of voice used in our course texts.

A short PowerPoint slide show is required for all presentations, and we’ll use class time to prepare at least skeletal drafts of the PowerPoints.

Here’s how to prepare:

• Coordinate with me and other presenters before the actual presentation to ensure variety rather than redundancy in topic matter that centers on style and voice in your assigned text.
• Rehearse your presentation, and if it bores you at any point or doesn’t reveal something interesting about a writer’s voice as conveyed in style, revise the presentation so that it does engage and interest.
• Produce and rely on a brief (3- 5 PowerPoint screens) to cover the points that you are explaining. Quote short textual passages on these screens and mark them so as to make them largely visible and to keep people’s attention on the screen and your voice.
• Use another audio/visual aid (besides your own voice and not just the print book you’re working with) in your presentation to give your presentation pizzazz—and don’t hesitate to employ words like pizzazz in your PowerPoint script, as this is a class about literary voice!  Item 1

Additional Resources

• YouTube Comedy Video on How NOT to Use Powerpoint This 4 minute video is a low-key way to introduce students to some of the more extreme abuses of PowerPoint.
• Bedford St. Martins   Tutorial on Preparing Presentation Slides This is an online tutorial with some solid nuts and bolts guidelines for building audience-friendly slides. It can also be used as a point of discussion for how "rules of thumb" can cause problems in presenting complex material.
• Excerpt from Edward Tufte's The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint This essay is a classic for critiquing how Powerpoint can reduce the analytical complexity of data and conclusions, in some cases leading to bad and even dangerous decisions in technical environments. 
•   Facebook
•   Instagram
•   Twitter
•   Newsletter

Number of items in cart: 0

• Your cart is empty.
• Total: $0.00

What Are the Key Benefits of Using PowerPoint in Teaching and Learning?

Table of Contents

The Importance of PowerPoint Presentation in Teaching

An education-based PowerPoint presentation templates have become an integral part of teaching in today’s classrooms. They provide educators with a versatile tool for delivering engaging and interactive lessons. PPT presentations also offer numerous benefits for students, including the ability to improve concentration and comprehension levels.

Additionally, by using PowerPoint slides in conjunction with other instructional materials, such as textbooks and handouts, teachers can ensure that all students are able to access the information being presented in class. PowerPoint presentations can be a powerful tool for teaching and learning when used effectively.

The main reason behind this is that PowerPoint presentations enable you to interact with your audience psychologically. So, here we’re going to discuss the power of PowerPoint in education.

In most cases, presentations are designed for businesses and applied very commonly in business areas. Moreover, presentation slides are likewise used in the education sector and can make your educational or research content compelling.

Let’s get started. Scroll now to read the key benefits of using PowerPoint in teaching and learning .

Why PowerPoint Templates Are the Best Tool for Teaching?

PowerPoint templates are an excellent tool for teaching. They provide a consistent and professional look to your presentations and help keep your ideas organized. Presentation templates also make updating and changing your slides easy, so you can always keep your presentations fresh and up-to-date.

When teaching a subject like biology, getting your audience interested in what you have to say is essential. PowerPoint templates can help you set the tone for your presentation and reinforce the type of content you will discuss. There are various templates out there, so you can find one that will let you teach your subject efficiently and keep things neat and organized.

In addition, PPT slides can be easily shared with other teachers so that you can collaborate on projects and assignments. Overall, PowerPoint templates are a versatile and valuable tool for any teacher. With their help, you can create engaging and informative presentations to help your students learn and succeed.

How PowerPoint Templates Let You Engage Your Students or Audience?

At present, it’s more important than ever to be able to engage your audience. Whether you’re giving a PPT presentation to a group of students or speaking to a potential client, you need to be able to capture their attention and keep them engaged.

One way to do this is by using PowerPoint templates. With templates, you can create visually appealing and informative presentations. By using engaging visuals and helpful content, you can ensure that your audience stays interested in what you’re saying.

In addition, templates can help you save time when creating presentations. All you need to do with everything already laid out for you is add your content. Accordingly, templates can help you create professional and effective presentations.

Although presentation skills are essential for everyone, they are particularly important for educators. After all, a large part of a teacher’s job is to present information to students engagingly and effectively. Fortunately, there are some simple tips that can help to improve any presentation.

• First, it is important to be well prepared. This means clearly understanding the material that will be covered and knowing how to effectively communicate it to the audience.
• It is also significant to be aware of the audience’s level of knowledge and adjust the presentation accordingly.
• Finally, it is significant to be confident and keep the presentation interesting using various techniques such as humor, stories, or multimedia elements.

By following these tips, any teacher can deliver a successful presentation.

How to Create an Educational Presentation Quickly?

PowerPoint templates are a great way to teach your students detailed data. For your lessons to be practical, you need your students to focus and pay attention, so having templates allows them the tools they need to learn more effectively.

It’s a wise way of helping children in school hone their PowerPoint skills. Many children feel overwhelmed when they have to start creating presentations from scratch-templates give them a structure they can follow and tweak to make their own.

Additionally, templates can be reused multiple times, which saves you time in the long run. With so many benefits, it’s no wonder that PowerPoint templates are becoming increasingly popular in educational settings.

If you’re finding a way to help, your students learn more effectively, consider using PowerPoint templates in your next lesson.

However, you can create an informative and engaging presentation with some preparation and organization. Here are a few tips to help you get started:

• Choose a subject that is interesting and relevant to your audience.
• Gather information and resources on the topic.
• Outline your presentation content.
• Create visuals or slides to accompany your presentation content.
• Practice giving your presentation.
• Time yourself so you can keep it within the desired time frame.

Let’s walk through the best practices to create a unique educational PPT presentation.

Choose a Subject That Is Interesting and Relevant to Your Audience

When creating an educational PowerPoint, choosing a subject that is interesting and relevant to your audience is essential.

This will help engage the audience and ensure that they learn from the presentation.

Also, choosing a relevant topic will help keep the audience’s attention focused on the PowerPoint. There are a few different ways to determine what subject would be most exciting and pertinent to your audience. One way is to consider the age range of the audience.

Another way is to think about what type of information would be most helpful to them. Additionally, you can research the interests of the audience ahead of time. Considering these factors, you can choose a subject for your PowerPoint that will be both interesting and relevant to your audience.

Gather Information and Resources on the Topic

If you want to create an educational PPT presentation, it’s essential to gather information and resources on your topic first. This will ensure that the PowerPoint is informative and accurate.

There are a few different ways to go about gathering information. One option is to do some online research. Another option is to visit a library and look for books or articles on the topic.

Once you have brought together all the necessary information, you can start putting together your PowerPoint presentation. Remember to include only appropriate information and to present it in an organized and visually appealing way.

If a little effort is put into creating a PowerPoint, you can come up with an educational presentation that you will like.

Outline Your Presentation Content

You will need to describe your content thoroughly when creating educational PowerPoint slides. This will be useful to organize your thoughts and ensure that your presentation is cohesive and informative. Begin by brainstorming the main points that you want to cover.

Then, create an introductory presentation outline, including an introduction, body, and conclusion. Once you have a general overview of your content, you can begin to flesh out the details. In the body of your presentation, include supporting evidence for each point you make.

In conclusion, summarize the key points of your presentation and leave your audience with something to think about. By wisely and efficiently editing and structuring your content, you can create a captivating and interactive PowerPoint lesson that is both informative and interesting.

Create Visuals or Slides to Accompany Your Presentation Content

You must include visual components to reveal information in an instructional PowerPoint presentation. It will help to engage the audience and provide them with a more immersive experience.

Additionally, visuals can help clarify and strengthen the key points you are trying to communicate. If used effectively, they can also help to add interest and excitement to your presentation.

When choosing visuals, be sure to select ones that are high quality and relevant to your topic. Avoid using too many visuals, as this can overwhelm your audience.

Instead, focus on choosing a few useful visuals to support your presentation and help your audience understand your message better.

Practice Giving Your Presentation

Whether you are allowed to give a speech, practice builds expertise. By practicing your presentation, you can ensure that you are delivering your material in the most effective way possible.

Being careful with your delivery, body language, and overall clarity is essential when practicing. Remember that eye contact is key and that you want to project confidence in your ability to speak on the topic at hand.

It can also be helpful to tape-record yourself so that you can listen back and identify areas that may need improvement. With a bit of practice, you will be capable of giving an educative and memorable presentation.

Time Yourself So You Can Keep It Within the Desired Time Frame

If you’re planning for an educational presentation, it’s important to time yourself stay within the desired time frame. This can be exceptionally important if you’re giving a presentation to a group of students who have a limited attention span.

You can ensure that your presentation stays on track and doesn’t run over by timing yourself. There are a few different ways to time yourself. One option is to use a stopwatch or timer.

Another option for keeping track of where you are in your presentation is periodically checking the clock.

Whichever method you choose, ensure you give yourself enough time to practice to stay within the desired time frame when giving your presentation.

How an Educational PowerPoint Presentation Skyrocket Your Success

A well-designed PowerPoint slide can be the key to success in any educational setting. A PowerPoint presentation can help students grasp complex concepts and remember key points by organizing visually appealing and easy-to-understand information.

Additionally, a PPT presentation can add excitement and interest to a dull lecture or dry text. When used effectively, a PowerPoint presentation can engage students and encourage them to participate actively in learning.

As a result, an investment in a professional educational PowerPoint presentation can pay off handsomely in terms of student success.

PowerPoint templates are must-haves for both inexperienced and veteran educators. One of the top reasons is that it saves hours of manual work and struggles.

For instance, if you’ve picked a premium customizable education PPT template, it only requires a couple of minutes to edit and craft your presentation layout. It means you can develop professional PPT presentation infographics within half an hour.

There are countless templates that educators can use for a wide variety of subjects, including maths, science, humanities studies like literature and history, and many more.

It allows your children to have a hands-on, experiment-based curriculum where they can visualize key concepts while paying attention to multimedia elements tools provided by PowerPoint templates along the way.

Now, let’s walk through the top tips to present an impactful educational PPT presentation that will comprehensively drive knowledge to your potential audience.

• Arrange your presentation objective in a way that attracts your audience and familiarizes the area of discussion in seconds. You can use animated PPT templates or other visual aids to make it attractive and appealing.
• Try to insert at least one brief one-liner highlighting the relevance and benefits of learning that particular topic.
• Include self-image or videos to personalize your presentation content.
• Add animations and slide transitions to explain the key learning steps.
• Include charts, maps, infographics , images, and graphs that illustrate your topic at hand. A well-organized chart could be vital to driving your point home. Regarding corporate PowerPoint presentations , adding Gantt Charts and other business-related details is better.
• Avoid having several ideas on one single slide. It may overwhelm your viewers.
• Leave a little more white space around each element in your PPT slide.
• No need to add every sentence you intend to speak on your PowerPoint slide. Instead, add sharp points that are easily read and comprehended. Then, explain it.

It is not surprising that technology has fundamentally changed education. In former times, the only way to learn about a topic was to hear a lecture from a professor in a classroom. Today, virtual presentations have become an essential tool for educators. There are many reasons why online presentations are so valuable in education. So, learn how to create virtual presentations that capture your audience’s attention .

Advantages of Purchasing Fully Editable PowerPoint Presentation Templates for Teaching

As we discussed above, PowerPoint templates are a great teaching tool for many reasons. They allow the presentation to maintain a uniform look and feel, which is key for understanding the message. Moreover, it can quickly add sense to your teaching.

It is the only wise choice to purchase a fully-editable premium PowerPoint presentation layout for teaching purposes. Then, you can professionally teach your audience the way you want to educate them.

Here are the top reasons why one should turn to fully editable premium education PPT infographics:

• Fully editable PPT themes for education will let you overcome the stress of starting with a blank slate each time.
• All premium education PowerPoint layouts are made with plenty of ideas and unique designs to effectively present your education or research topic.
• When you have a fully editable PPT theme, you will easily add videos, images, and your brand logo.
• You can edit and customize anything in the layout without losing quality in minutes. There is no need to have any design skills to edit and customize them.
• These editable PowerPoint presentation templates will help you save hours of manual work and confusion.

Top Points to Keep in Mind While Preparing a PowerPoint for Teaching

Characteristics that your students like about education PowerPoint slides are:

• Graphs, charts, and maps can increase the understanding of content.
• Bulleted lists that let them focus on the top ideas.
• Animations and slide transitions are the best visual aids.
• Cliparts and creative layouts.
• Present your ideas in short phrases rather than lengthy paragraphs.
• Spoken words with images are better than pictures with text.

Note: Cliparts are the perfect choice to get your audience’s attention in seconds. It is helpful in education PowerPoint presentations for small children and students. However, try to avoid Cliparts if your presentation is for technical students or medical students.

Characteristics that your students don’t like about education PowerPoint slides are:

• Too many ideas on a single slide.
• Templates with too many colors.
• Irrelevant images and WordArts decrease understanding and learning compared to presentation layouts with no picture or animation.

Find the Best Education PowerPoint Presentation Slides for Teaching

PowerPoint presentations have a great power to share your ideas comprehensively, especially for educational purposes. Therefore, picking the suitable PowerPoint presentation template that fits well will help you significantly convey your presentation.

Moreover, choosing the appropriate theme or design is the base part of the entire PPT presentation.

There may be several PPTs available in the free source, but always remember that they may not assure you the quality and features needed for a powerful PowerPoint template.

Therefore, it will be wise to pick a premium PPT template designed by professionals . Selecting an ideal template for creating an attention-grabbing educational presentation is crucial if you wish to make your presentation’s tone professional. Thus, say goodbye to typical, boring PowerPoint templates that ruin your presentation.

Explore the top highlights of our exclusive educational PowerPoint presentation template below:

• 100% Fully editable PowerPoint slides & design elements.
• 2 Aspect ratio (4:3 & 16:9).
• One-time purchase (Free download for life).
• Unlimited downloads (Come back anytime to download the files again).
• Lifetime free updates (We update by adding more slides regularly).
• Lifetime free customer care support.

There you can view the best-in-quality education or research topic presentation themes designed by our expert graphic designers.

You can find a selection of creative, unique PPT themes here at FlySlides , in addition to education PowerPoint templates or research presentation PPT slides. All our premium PowerPoint templates are fully customizable and come with unlimited download and update options.

Besides our PPT templates, we also have a tremendous selection of fully customizable Keynote presentation templates and Google Slides themes . So it’s up to you to select your preference. With FlySlides, you can quickly create your education presentations on PowerPoint, Keynote, and Google Slides.

You can also refer to:

• Tips to Develop a Powerful Business Presentation .
• 10 Proven Tips to Make a Great Sales Presentation .

What’s more, Look into our library and take a look at our templates. They’re available in as many presentations as you want and skyrocket your success as a PowerPoint presenter. Why waste your precious time? Just explore our top selection of PowerPoint presentation layouts for education and find the best templates for your next presentation .

Written by FlySlides Editorial Team

FlySlides is one of the leading and high-quality Free and Premium PowerPoint, Google Slides & Keynotes Templates providers on the internet.

FlySlides is one of the leading and high-quality premium PowerPoint, Google Slides & Keynotes Templates provider on the internet

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter, and receive updates, free templates, and amazing special offers

Follow Us On Social Media

Follow us for instant notification and updates

Recent Blog Posts

Recently published blog posts

How to Create Virtual Presentations That Wow Your Audience

How to Create a Visual Brand Identity That People Love?

10 Tips on How to Make a Perfect Sales Presentation

12 Essential Tips to Create a Powerful Business Presentation

13 Important Tips for Finding the Perfect PowerPoint Presentation Template

Recent templates.

Check out some of the latest presentation templates

Timeline Bundle Infographic Diagrams Keynote Template

Unsorted Timelines Infographic Diagrams Keynote Template

Timeline Bundle Infographic Diagrams Google Slides Template (Theme)

Unsorted Timelines Infographic Diagrams Google Slides Template (Theme)

Timeline Bundle Infographic Diagrams PowerPoint (PPT) Template

Unsorted Timelines Infographic Diagrams PowerPoint (PPT) Template

Read more interesting posts.

The Innovative Instructor

Pedagogy – best practices – technology.

PowerPoint in the Classroom

Do you use PowerPoint (or Keynote, Prezi or other presentation software) as part of your teaching? If yes, why? This is not meant to be a question that puts you on the defensive, rather to ask you to reflect on how the use of a presentation application enhances your teaching and fits in with other strategies to meet your learning objectives for the class.

A key point from that post to reiterate: “Duarte reports on research showing that listening and reading are conflicting cognitive processes, meaning that your audience can either read your slides or listen to you; they cannot do both at the same time. However, our brains can handle simultaneous listening to a speaker and seeing relevant visual material.”

It’s important to keep this in mind, particularly if your slides are text heavy. Your students will be scrambling to copy the text verbatim without actually processing what is being said. On the other hand, if your slides are used as prompts (presenting questions or key points with minimal text) or if you don’t use slides at all, students will have to listen to what you are saying, and summarize those concepts in their notes. This process will enhance their understanding of the material.

An article in Focus on Teaching from August 1, 2012 by Maryellen Weimer, PhD asks us to consider Does PowerPoint Help or Hinder Learning? Weimer references a survey of students on the use of PowerPoint by their instructors. A majority of students reported that all or most of their instructors used PowerPoint. Weimer’s expresses the concern that “Eighty-two percent [of students surveyed] said they “always,” “almost always,” or “usually” copy the information on the slides.” She asks, “Does copying down content word-for-word develop the skills needed to organize material on your own? Does it expedite understanding the relationships between ideas? Does it set students up to master the material or to simply memorize it?” Further, she notes that PowerPoint slides that serve as an outline or use bulleted lists may “oversimplify” complex content, encourage passivity, and limit critical thinking.

Four journal articles from Cell Biology Education on PowerPoint in the Classroom (2004 Fall) present different points of view (POV) on the use of PowerPoint. Although written over a decade ago, most of the concepts are still relevant. Be aware that some of the links are no longer working. From the introduction to the series:

Four POVs are presented: 1) David Keefe and James Willett provide their case why PowerPoint is an ideal teaching software. Keefe is an educational researcher at the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International. Willett is a professor at George Mason University in the Departments of Microbial and Molecular Bioscience; as well as Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. 2) Kim McDonald highlights the causes of PowerPointlessness, a term which indicates the frequent use of PowerPoint as a crutch rather than a tool. She is a Bioscience Educator at the Shodor Education Foundation, Inc. 3) Diana Voss asks readers if PowerPoint is really necessary to present the material effectively or not. Voss is a Instructional Computing Support Specialist at SUNY Stony Brook. 4) Cynthia Lanius takes a light-hearted approach to ask whether PowerPoint is a technological improvement or just a change of pace for teacher and student presentations. Lanius is a Technology Integration Specialist in the Sinton (Texas) Independent School District.

These are short, op-ed style, pieces that will further stimulate your thinking on using presentation software in your teaching.

For more humorous, but none-the-less thought provoking approach, see Rebecca Shuman’s anti-PowerPoint tirade featured in Slate (March 7, 2014): PowerPointless . With the tagline, “Digital slideshows are the scourge of higher education,” Shuman reminds us that “A presentation, believe it or not, is the opening move of a conversation—not the entire conversation.”

Shuman offers a practical guide for those, like her, who do use presentation software, but seek to avoid abusing it. “It is with a few techniques and a little attention, possible to ensure that your presentations rest in the slim minority that are truly interactive and actually help your audience learn.” Speaking.io , the website Shuman references, discusses the use of presentation software broadly, not just for academics, but has many useful ideas and tips.  

For a resource specific to academic use, see the University of Central Florida’s Faculty Center for Teaching & Learning’s Effective Use of PowerPoint . The experts at the Center examine the advantages and challenges of using presentation software in the classroom, suggest approaches to take, and discuss in detail using PowerPoint for case studies, with clickers, as worksheets, for online (think flipped classes as well) teaching, the of use presenter view, and demonstrate best practices for delivery and content construction.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: CC Oliver Tacke https://www.flickr.com/photos/otacke/12635014673/

One thought on “ PowerPoint in the Classroom ”

This post offers a well-framed discussion of the pedagogical choices behind presentation choices we make in our classes–thanks!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Med Sci Educ
• v.29(4); 2019 Dec

The Impact of Supplementing PowerPoint with Detailed Notes and Explanatory Videos on Student Attendance and Performance in a Physiology Module in Medicine

Mohammed h. abdulla.

1 Department of Physiology, School of Medicine, Western Gateway Building, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

Eleanor O’Sullivan

2 Department of Oral Surgery, Cork University Dental School and Hospital, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

PowerPoint is widely used in higher education with reported advantages on student learning. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of detailed notes and videos as a supplement to PowerPoint slides on student attendance and performance. First-year medical students’ opinion on whether the supplementary material assisted their learning of Physiology in addition to demographics was collected in a survey. Attendance was similar for participants who used notes and videos to those who did not, for male vs. female and for participants from biomedical vs. non-biomedical backgrounds. However, within the non-biomedical cohort, attendance of male respondents was significantly higher (95 ± 3 vs. 81 ± 6%, P  < 0.05), although both groups used notes and videos. Similarly, attendance of female participants of biomedical background was higher ( P  < 0.05) than female participants of non-biomedical background ( biomedical vs. non-biomedical : 94 ± 3 vs. 81 ± 6%) even though both cohorts used notes and videos. Providing notes and videos had no adverse impact on attendance (90 ± 2%, 8 lectures) and tended to enhance exam scores for low-performing students in the class when compared with those of previous years’ cohorts ( 2018 vs. 2017 and 2016 : 61 ± 5% vs. 55 ± 6% and 47 ± 8%, respectively). There was an increase in the immediate gain of knowledge following watching/listening to videos ( after vs. before : 65 ± 3% vs. 48 ± 3%). The survey revealed a positive student perception of supplementary material mainly because they felt it reduced the time required to search for relevant information.

Introduction

PowerPoint is a widely used teaching tool in higher education for many years now. One of the benefits of this technology is its potential to enhance students’ engagement and empower effective learning [ 1 – 3 ]. Moreover, this technology helps students to organise their notes if they use it as a starting point to expand their knowledge from assigned textbooks. However, many students use PowerPoint as their sole study source even though all learning objectives might not have been covered in a lecture. Moreover, due to time constraints, teachers tend to list the important points in the lecture as bullet points and leave students to take notes. However, it is reported that most students are poor note takers, typically recording less than 50% of critical points in a lecture [ 4 ]. One possible solution to this issue is to provide supplementary material with each lecture. This material expands on the information provided in the lecture rather than just reiterating the lecture content. Previous research indicated that this approach improved students’ learning experience by enhancing their immediate recall and academic performance [ 5 – 7 ].

In addition to PowerPoint presentations, students can be provided with supplementary notes that expand on what is mentioned in the slides. Previous studies indicated that students who were provided with detailed notes, i.e. notes that contain main ideas in addition to supporting details, performed better in their exams than students who reviewed their own notes [ 8 – 10 ]. Moreover, Kobayashi [ 11 ] showed that low-performing students gained greater benefits from this approach compared with higher performance students. The effect of explanatory notes on students’ learning of Physiology in medicine and their attitude towards using them as a learning and review material was examined in the present study.

Similarly, supplementary videos that explain important concepts can be introduced as a complementary learning tool to PowerPoint slides. Indeed, videos add visual and auditory elements that cannot be found in the text notes. They can enhance student understanding of main concepts when more time is needed to explain these concepts than is available during a lecture. Indeed, these videos can also act as an effective revision tool at exam time [ 5 ]. The videos can be interactive by introducing pre- and post-video quizzes. A recent study indicated that students who used interactive videos with instructor’s explanations scored higher in the post-video test compared with a pre-video test [ 12 ]. Similarly, the use of conceptual videos was found to enhance students’ understanding of calculus in a previous study by Swedberg [ 13 ].

Information about the effect of supplementary notes and explanatory videos on medical students’ learning of Physiology is lacking in the literature. The aim of this study was to examine students’ attitude and behaviour towards the use of supplementary notes and videos in addition to PowerPoint slides in a programme that is known to be limited in time. We hypothesise that this approach assists students’ learning by providing detailed explanations of the main concepts in the form of text or as an interactive video.

Research Questions

The focus of the study was on two questions regarding the use of supplementary notes and pre-recorded videos in conjunction with PowerPoint slides:

• Does the use of supplementary notes and videos enhance understanding of core concepts and therefore improve exam scores?
• What is the students’ attitude towards the use of supplementary notes and videos as a learning and revision tool?

Participants and Setting

This study involved first-year graduate entry to medicine students in UCC in Fundamentals in Medicine II (module code GM1002). The study was conducted over a 9-week period from January to March 2018. The graduate entry to medicine class ( n  = 82) includes students of different ages (21–35 years), region of origin (European, EU; and non-European, non-EU) and undergraduate degree backgrounds (biomedical and non-biomedical). The EU students are mainly from Ireland while the non-EU students are from Africa, Asia, Middle East and North America. This study was approved by the Social Research Ethics Committee (SREC) in UCC (Log 2018-028). Teaching comprised a series of 8 traditional lectures of approximately 50 min long, delivered by one instructor in the Department of Physiology in UCC. For this module, lecture attendance was encouraged, but not compulsory; students were not required to sign a daily attendance register.

Lecture material, including PowerPoint slides, written notes and videos, was made available to students ahead of the actual lecture time with a comprehensive list of learning objectives. The PowerPoint slides were constructed with a focus on main points without using too much text, using figures and diagrams when relevant. Further details on important points on the slides and explanations of any figures and diagrams were inserted at the bottom of each slide (supplementary notes) using the PowerPoint space allocated for notes, i.e. the notes pane. In addition, clinical scenarios and interactive questions related to the main concept on the slide were included.

Explanatory videos were recorded by the instructor ahead of lectures using Quick time player on a MacBook Pro, using the PowerPoint slides as a background. PowerPoint provides a pen option whereby the pointer can be changed into a pen or a highlighter to write, draw on the slides or highlight important points. Videos were utilised for two particular concepts in cardiovascular Physiology that required detailed explanation, i.e. electrocardiography (ECG) and electrical and mechanical events during the cardiac cycle. Students’ feedback from previous years indicated that students frequently struggle with these concepts in this module. The videos, which averaged approximately 27 min, were uploaded to blackboard. Blackboard is a web-based server software platform to which module material can be uploaded for student use. Links to these videos were embedded in between pre- and post-video tests for self-assessment using blackboard quiz options.

Quantitative Assessment of the Effect of Supplementary Videos/Notes on Student Learning

As mentioned above, pre- and post-video tests were utilised to examine students’ performance before and after watching explanatory videos. This approach was intended to provide a higher level of interaction compared with a passive approach of only watching/listening to the videos [ 14 ]. In this study, six multiple-choice questions (MCQ) were provided to allow students to assess their understanding of a concept followed by a video explaining that concept. After viewing the video, the students completed a post-test comprised of identical questions to the pre-test but randomised in order. Once the test was finished, blackboard provided students with an exit report summarising their test score and giving detailed feedback on why a given answer should be selected. Data from two videos were analysed and used in the present study.

Quantitative assessment of students’ performance in the final exam following the use of explanatory notes was also studied. Eleven MCQs were chosen from the 2017 and 2018 end of module and end of year exams based on whether the question content was related ( n  = 5 MCQs) or not ( n  = 6 MCQs) to the explanatory notes attached to PowerPoint slides. The responses were compared with the identical questions in 2016 where no explanatory notes were given. The MCQs related to explanatory notes aimed to assess three of the Bloom’s taxonomy categories, namely:

• Knowledge recall (i.e. provided nearly verbatim in the notes pane). There was only one MCQ under this category.
• Comprehension (i.e. provided, but not verbatim, in the notes pane). There were 2 MCQs under this category.
• Application (i.e. not provided in the notes pane and required students to solve a new problem using information they had to comprehend from the notes pane). There were 2 MCQs under this category.

To minimize the effect of having different students over the years with varied academic ability on any possible change in performance, student performance on identical MCQ questions across the same study period from the Pharmacology content in this module was analysed. The Pharmacology part was taught consistently to the same cohort of students and in parallel to Physiology but without the use of the intervention used in this study.

Students’ Self-Reported Perception of Learning

A survey with both Likert-type and non-Likert type questions was utilised at the end of the module to examine students’ perception of supplementary notes and pre-recorded videos and their perceived effectiveness on students’ learning of core concepts in cardiovascular Physiology lectures, utilising Google Forms ( https://www.google.com/forms/about ) web-based survey options. The survey questionnaire took approximately 10 min to complete and participation was voluntary and anonymous. Also, failure to participate in the survey did not result in any negative consequences for the student and no extra credits were offered for its completion. Participants were asked to consent the use of the survey data as part of a research project. The survey link was sent to students via students’ university email and they were given 4 weeks to complete the questionnaire. A total of 68 (83%) participants completed the survey.

The first part of the survey consisted of demographic questions on gender, age, nationality and undergraduate background. Students also reported their attendance to the 8 cardiovascular Physiology lectures in this module. The second part included attitudinal questions regarding the usefulness or otherwise of the supplementary notes and pre-recorded videos to students’ learning using a Likert scale ranging from very useful/strongly agree (5) to not useful at all/strongly disagree (1). This was followed by checkbox-type questions exploring why students thought the supplementary notes were useful or otherwise to their learning of Physiology in this module. In order to arrange the responses into particular themes, students were provided with a list of suggested answers but were also given a free text option if their reason for the use or otherwise of notes/videos is not included in the list. There were two checkbox questions in the survey regarding notes, the first one was “Why do you think the supplementary notes attached to the PowerPoint slides were useful (Please select all that apply from the list below)” while the second one was “Why do you think the supplementary notes attached to the PowerPoint slides were NOT useful (Please select all that apply from the list below)”.

Students’ response regarding the use of explanatory videos was obtained using a short answer text question to respond to the statement “Please insert any comments you have about your usage of explanatory blackboard videos”. In addition, students’ explanations for lack of use of these videos were obtained by asking students to pick the most relevant answer for this question “Please indicate the reason(s) for lack of usage of supplementary blackboard videos (Select all that apply from the list below)” from a suggested list of answers. Finally, the survey ended with open text question inviting general comments about students’ perception of supplementary notes/videos in this module.

Statistical Analysis

The informational and attitudinal survey questions were analysed by gender, region of origin and biomedical background using chi-square contingency analysis using GraphPad Prism (GraphPad v6 Software Inc., San Diego, CA, USA). Similarly, the self-reported attendance in this module was compared between female and male subgroups of either EU and non-EU, biomedical and non-biomedical degree or < 25 and 25–35 years participants using parametric and non-parametric data analysis using unpaired student’s t test and Mann Whitney test respectively. Students’ performance in the pre- and post-video tests was compared using a paired student’s t test. To compare students’ performance in exams over 3 years (2016, 2017 and 2018) and between questions related/not related to supplementary PowerPoint notes, a repeated measure two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used. Data are expressed as mean ± standard error of the mean (S.E.M.) with significance at P  < 0.05.

The Effects of Demographic Variables on Students’ Attendance

Demographic information as well as self-reported lecture attendance is presented in Table ​ Table1. 1 . The 82 students in the GM1002 class were comprised of 45 (55%) females and 37 (45%) males. A total of 68 students (83% of the class) participated in the survey of which 37 (54%) were females and 31 (46%) were males. The age of survey participants was almost equally divided between those aged < 25 years or 25–35 years. Non-EU students showed a higher participation rate than EU students (54 vs. 46%). According to the survey, there were fewer students from non-biomedical compared with biomedical degree background (43 vs. 57%). The attendance in this part of the module was not recorded by the lecturer and therefore the attendance data were solely self-reported. The survey showed an average attendance of almost 90% of cardiovascular Physiology lectures in this module with similar attendance rates reported by female and male participants and among students aged < 25 years compared with 25–35 years. Analysis of attendance by gender and age category showed a tendency for higher attendance by male participant of < 25 years old compared with females of that category (92 ± 4 vs. 82 ± 6%, n.s.). Conversely, females aged 25–35 years tended to have higher attendance rates than male participants of that age category. While the overall attendance of biomedical and non-biomedical participants was similar, male non-biomedical degree students had a significantly higher attendance rate than female non-biomedical degree students (95 ± 3 vs. 81 ± 6%; P  < 0.05). Furthermore, attendance of female participants of biomedical background was higher ( P  < 0.05) than the attendance of fellow female participants of non-biomedical background (94 ± 3 vs. 81 ± 6%). The attendance was not adversely impacted by providing supplementary videos and detailed notes. Analysis of self-reported attendance showed similar attendance of users and non-users of supplementary videos (90 ± 2 vs. 84 ± 6%).

Self-reported demographic data of survey participants and answers to attitudinal question regarding the usefulness or otherwise of supplementary notes/videos. A Likert scale was used to rank usefulness of the supplementary notes or degree of agreement that explanatory videos assisted students’ understanding of core concepts. Usefulness rank was set as 5 for very useful, 4 for useful, 3 for neutral, 2 for not useful and 1 for not useful at all. Agreement rank was set as 5 for strongly agree, 4 for agree, 3 for neither agree nor disagree, 2 for disagree and 1 for strongly disagree. * P  < 0.05 non-biomedical vs. biomedical participants, # P < 0.05 female vs. male participants

Self-reported information about frequency of viewing/listening to explanatory videos in the different age, gender, nationality and undergraduate degree groups is shown in Table ​ Table1. 1 . There was a similar number of participants in the male vs. female, < 25 vs. 25–35 years and EU vs. non-EU categories who watched or listened to pre-recorded videos. However, there was a higher number ( P  < 0.05) of students of non-biomedical background who watched or listened to videos compared with their biomedical peers (93 vs. 72%).

The Effects of Demographic Variables on Self-Reported Perception of Supplementary Videos/Notes

The response to attitudinal questions regarding the utilisation of supplementary videos/notes is presented in Table ​ Table1. 1 . Two Likert scale questions were analysed from the survey questions. The first was “Viewing the supplementary videos helped me to better understand the material presented in the lecture” while the second question was “How useful did you find the supplementary notes attached to the PowerPoint slides in learning cardiovascular Physiology concepts in this module”. There was a similar attitude regarding the use of videos/notes in this part of the module by the different age, gender, nationality and undergraduate background groups. The data showed that most of the students (91%, average response 4.3/5) indicated that explanatory videos/notes helped them to develop a better understanding of the key concepts in this part of the module and were useful to students’ learning.

The Effect of Supplementary Videos/Notes on Students’ Performance

Figure ​ Figure1 1 illustrates the impact of explanatory PowerPoint notes on the students’ performance. As no explanatory notes were provided in 2016, it was used for comparison with student performance in 2017 and 2018 where notes were provided. To examine any possible effect of explanatory notes on different academic performers, the class was divided into thirds based on students’ overall mark in end of module and end of year exams. As demonstrated in Fig. ​ Fig.1, 1 , there was no significant difference in the overall student performance in 2017 and 2018 compared with 2016 for all questions directly related to the explanatory notes provided with PowerPoint slides or in questions not related to explanatory notes. However, the lower third students’ performance in identical questions in 2017 and 2018 showed a trend towards a higher performance in notes-related questions by almost 17% and 29% respectively compared with the performance in 2016. In order to exclude the effect of having different students’ academic level between the 3 years, a parallel analysis of students’ performance in 14 identical Pharmacology MCQs across the same period was used as shown in Fig.  2 . Students had similar academic performance in 2017 and 2018 compared with 2016. Likewise, the performance of the lower third students in this exam did not show any significant changes in 2017 (50 ± 4%) or 2018 (50 ± 5%) compared with 2016 (57 ± 4%).

Student performance in the end of module exam over 3 years (2016, 2017 and 2018). The upper panel demonstrates the performance for all students in this module over the 3 years. The middle and lower panels present the performance of upper and lower thirds of the class in this exam respectively. It should be noted that no supplementary notes were used in teaching this module in 2016

Student performance in a parallel end of year Pharmacology exam across 3 years (2016, 2017 and 2018). The same cohort of students were studied and identical items were utilised across the years

The effect of supplementary videos on students’ performance is presented in Fig.  3a . The average performance of all students who used these videos in the post-video test was increased by more than 30% ( P  < 0.05) compared with the pre-video test. This significantly enhanced performance was seen for both upper and lower third performers in this class. However, the highest gain of more than 40% ( P  < 0.05) was seen for the upper third performers compared with 24% ( P  < 0.05) for the lower third performers in these tests. The usefulness of supplementary videos pre- and post-tests was further demonstrated by students’ attitudinal response to the question “How useful did you find the pre-/post-video test (e.g. before and after the Wiggers’ diagram or ECG vectors video)”. The results indicated that more than 70% of respondents ( n  = 55) to this question indicated that pre- and post-video test is either “Very useful” or “Useful” to them. Over 25% of the students gave a “Neutral” response while 4% felt that the pre-/post-video test was “Not useful” (Fig. ​ (Fig.3b 3b ).

Student performance ( a ) and attitude ( b ) in using the pre- and post-video tests. a Students’ performance data were collected from two pre-recorded explanatory videos with test questions that are MCQ style. A total of 11 questions were analysed from the two videos for 49 participants. * P  < 0.05 post- vs. pre-test. b Students’ attitude regarding the pre- and post-video tests. A Likert style survey question about the usefulness of pre- and post-video tests was analysed for 55 (81%) responses. Students responded to the question “How useful did you find the pre-/post-video test”

Student Opinion on the Use of Supplementary Videos/Notes

Analysis of responses to the open-ended (23 responses, 34%) and checkbox (62 responses, 91%) questions regarding the use of supplementary videos and notes respectively is presented in Fig.  4 . Students felt the videos aided learning by (i) consolidating learning from the lectures and assisting knowledge retention (41%), (ii) providing a visual element to learning (27%), (iii) being a repository review resource (18%), (iv) allowing pause and replay (9%) and (v) reducing the time required to search for information online (5%) (Fig. ​ (Fig.4a 4a ).

Students’ comments on the use of supplementary videos ( a ) and notes ( b ). a Students responded to the open text question “Please insert any comments you have about your usage of supplementary videos” by listing their opinion regarding supplementary videos use in this part of the module (22 responses). b Student responded to the question “Please indicate the reason(s) for lack of usage of videos” by selecting all that that apply from a list. c Students responded to the question “Why do you think the supplementary notes attached to the PowerPoint slides were useful” by selecting from a list of suggested answers (62 responses). It should be noted that students were allowed to select more than one answer for the second question and this explains why there is a total of 147 responses in the bar chart of this question

Thirteen students (19%) indicated that they had not used the pre-recorded videos in this study. According to these students, they did not use videos in this module because (i) the concepts illustrated in the videos were explained in lectures (72%), (ii) time is limited in this module (17%), (iii) viewing/listening to videos is not their favourite learning style (15%), (iv) they did not know they were there (8%) and (v) the videos contained too much information/too long (8%) (Fig. ​ (Fig.4b 4b ).

When asked why they think the supplementary notes attached to the PowerPoint slides were useful, almost 77% of the responses to this question was that it is because they lessen the need to look for relevant information from external sources. The second most common reason given (60%) was that these notes are an available review resource at times of exam preparation. The next important reason for the usefulness of notes according to 55% of the responses was that these notes provided more detailed explanation of the slides than could be covered during a lecture. Furthermore, around 45% of the responses agreed that these notes were useful because they lessen the need to take notes during the lecture (Fig. ​ (Fig.4c). 4c ). Finally, there were few comments using “others” option with one student commented “Really good (notes) for providing context to students from a non-science background”, another said “If anything was missed when listening to the lecturer, the supplemental notes could cover myself” while a third student commented “… Good learning aids for concepts I maybe didn’t fully grasp at the time of the lecture”. Finally, there was one response in this survey who indicated lack of use of supplementary notes due to limited time to go through supplementary material in this course.

In this article, we showed that providing supplementary notes and videos along with PowerPoint slides assisted students’ understanding of cardiovascular Physiology in a medical programme and did not affect lecture attendance. This study revealed that the use of explanatory notes enhanced exam performance especially for low-performing students. Similarly, the use of conceptual videos in this module enhanced students’ immediate gain of knowledge as shown by enhanced performance in post-video test compared with pre-video test. Students valued the utilisation of supplementary videos and notes as a learning and revision tool in this module. The main reason that the supplementary videos were helpful, as per students’ feedback, is that the videos consolidated their learning from the lectures and helped their retention of knowledge. On the other hand, students thought that notes were useful mainly because they lessen the need to look for relevant information from external sources within the limited time available to study in this programme.

The Effects of Demographic Variables on Students’ Attendance and Perception of Videos/Notes

The survey results are representative of the class as 83% participated in the survey and the gender distribution of participants was similar to the overall class gender distribution. The attendance of students during the period of the study was examined to identify any differences related to the varied gender, age, nationality and undergraduate degree background. It should be noted that full attendance is required in this module and it is checked sporadically but not routinely. The self-reported attendance data showed no significant differences in attendance of the demographic groups. Interestingly, the data showed that female students from a non-biomedical background had poorer attendance compared with male non-biomedical students or to their female biomedical counterparts. Ellaway et al. [ 15 ] examined the impact of combining students of biomedical degree background with non-biomedical degree background. They highlighted the challenges imposed on non-science students both socially and academically and suggested that support should be provided to those students. It is possible that lower attendance of this subgroup is related to these challenges.

The present study demonstrated that providing students with detailed notes and supplementary videos did not impact upon their lecture attendance. The average attendance in the cardiovascular Physiology part of the GM1002 module was as high as 90%. The finding that attendance of this cohort of students was not affected by having detailed notes and explanatory videos available before the lectures is in line with previous reports [ 16 , 17 ].

The Effect of Supplementary Notes on Students’ Performance

PowerPoint is widely utilised in today’s higher education teaching but there is an ongoing question as to whether students should be provided with notes. Looking at data from this study as well as the literature [ 18 – 20 ], the authors are in favour of using supplementary notes at least in time-pressured medical programmes such as the graduate entry to medicine. Students in the accelerated programmes are under pressure to develop as much foundational knowledge as they can, while a reasonable number of them are from non-biological background. However, the authors are aware of the potential implications of this approach on students’ independent learning strategies and the possibility that it might detract from the goal of preparing them to become independent life-long learners. However, this programme is well enriched with several avenues for self-directed learning and problem-based exercises that are completely driven by students themselves.

Furthermore, the type of notes could vary between detailed notes and those that have main points only [ 20 , 21 ]. It is suggested that students provided with detailed notes can achieve higher recall of information and test performance than students provided with no notes [ 8 ]. Students usually take notes during lectures to ensure they do not miss important information and utilise these notes as a study source when preparing for exams. However, a previous study showed that students do miss critical points in this process [ 22 ]. Therefore, the present study examined the impact of providing detailed notes attached to each concept description in PowerPoint slides on student learning of Physiology in the graduate entry to medicine programme. The notes were provided with almost every slide of the PowerPoint presentation of lectures in this study. Although this study utilised limited number of MCQs to study performance, it compared identical MCQs across years. These MCQs were sought to assess three Bloom’s taxonomy categories, namely, knowledge recall, comprehension and application. The final exam scores of the lower third performers in the class were enhanced by almost 30% in 2018 compared with 2016 in questions related to supplementary notes, particularly those under Bloom’s application category. This indicates that enhancement in performance of this cohort was not simply due to recall of rote learning of answers provided. In addition, the authors are not aware of any extracurricular activities for students in this course. As such, there appears to be no external factor that would have detracted from Physiology learning in 2016. The finding of improved performance of this cohort was supported by a previous study showing that low-performing students gained greater benefits from detailed notes compared with high-performing students [ 11 ].

The overall class performance was only marginally enhanced after introducing detailed notes. This indicates that providing detailed notes was not the only factor in determining exam performance in this class. One important determining factor for usefulness of supplementary notes is the time at which these notes are used during the course as students use notes differently depending on the time of the year as shown by a previous study [ 23 ]. Grabe and Christopherson [ 23 ] found that the students’ use of the supplementary notes peaked during the time when the corresponding unit of content was being presented in the class and was less towards the exam time.

The detailed notes were received positively by students according to the survey feedback. One student mentioned “I like to use the notes under the slides for study as they condense the relevant information” while another student commented “I do like having the notes underneath the slides so I don't have to worry about taking notes and can focus on listening in class instead”. There was also another comment “I love the supplementary notes and think that the slide structure is easy to understand (great pictures with few, but relevant, explanations)”. Interestingly, one student pointed out that these notes were useful to students of a non-biological background “Having a non-science background, the additional notes/videos etc. really help to make the content more accessible and easier to understand”. The notes in this study served as a repository for learning and revising the key concepts at exam time, particularly if students miss valuable information during the lecture. It should be noted that one student indicated a lack of use of supplementary notes due to limited time in this module.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Providing Detailed Supplementary Notes

This study suggests that detailed notes serve as an important learning and revision tool for students. However, this intervention may also have a number of potential disadvantages, namely (i) it possibly promotes passive learning [ 24 ], and (ii) may encourage students’ absence from lectures [ 21 ]. However, students in this study were not discouraged from taking their own notes but were given supplementary notes as a repository. In addition, these notes included explanations of diagrams and figures on the PowerPoint slides to save students the time needed to search for explanations of these diagrams and figures. Furthermore, students’ attendance was not adversely affected by having these explanatory notes. This is in agreement with a previous study which indicated that students’ attendance can be improved by providing lecture notes before the lecture time [ 25 ]. Students’ self-reported attendance in the present study showed a very good attendance rate despite the provision of detailed notes and supplementary videos before lectures. It can be suggested, based on the attendance profile of students in this course [ 16 ], that a negative impact of providing detailed notes on attendance is unlikely.

The Effect of Supplementary Videos on Students’ Performance

The present study demonstrated an enhanced short-term gain of knowledge on the basis of performance in post- vs. pre-video test. Literature on the use of videos has demonstrated beneficial results on students’ learning in biology courses [ 5 , 26 – 28 ]. A blended mode similar to the one utilised in this study using videos in addition to traditional face-to-face lectures offered positive outcomes and enhanced students’ learning experience [ 28 ]. The videos in this study were made interactive through the pre- and post-video tests. Moreover, students can control their watching/listening experience by speeding up or slowing down and by stopping and replaying these videos when needed. In addition, the pen option on PowerPoint was used to highlight important points. In a previous study [ 14 ], interactive videos were showed to be satisfactorily received by students and were more effective in improving students’ performance than non-interactive videos. Finally, the present study showed that supplementary videos did not inversely impact students’ attendance; this is in line with a recent study in a biology course [ 29 ].

When students were asked why they felt videos were useful, they mentioned learning consolidation and enhanced retention of knowledge which was in line with quantitative data from post- vs. pre-video test results. The second reason given by students was that these videos add a visual element to learning. Some students focused on the benefits of videos as a review resource while others found these videos useful due to their interactive nature and because they save time searching for explanatory videos online. These views are in line with previous reports on the use of videos in teaching [ 5 , 30 ]. That said, 19% of respondents in this study said they did not use the videos. The most common reason for the lack of use was that students thought the videos simply explained concepts that are already covered in the lecture. Some students felt that time pressures in this module made it difficult to utilise supplementary resources besides PowerPoint slides.

Student feedback from the survey questionnaire showed that most of the students valued the videos and felt that the videos improved their understanding of core concepts in this part of the module. For example, one student commented “It was difficult to fully understand everything just by looking at the PowerPoint slides - however the video was able to help with this” while another student mentioned “If I needed to go back and understand a concept better, it would be easily accessible on blackboard” . A student also responded, “Thank you for taking the time to make sure we understood the material, providing additional resources (videos) and allowing us time to identify gaps in our knowledge”.

The research findings and questions that emerged from this study have implications for Physiology teaching in the medical programmes. The first observation is that students from a non-biological background utilised supplementary videos more than students from a biological background. This points to the importance of supplementary material in supporting students from non-biological background during their preclinical years. It is worth noting that the provision of videos in addition to detailed notes did not adversely impact on students’ attendance. Moreover, students’ attitude towards the use of this approach was overwhelmingly favourable. The feedback from the questionnaire showed a positive attitude by students towards the use of detailed notes and explanatory videos in addition to PowerPoint presentation.

Limitations and Future Research

A number of limitations to this study must be acknowledged. Firstly, there was no control group (i.e. students not provided with notes/videos) for direct comparison of performance. That said, every effort was made to maintain consistency across the years by utilising exactly the same questions and comparing performance of content outside Physiology for the same cohort of students. The Pharmacology content used for comparison was taught consistently across the 3 years without the intervention used in Physiology. Secondly, the present study did not examine the effect of providing detailed notes and explanatory videos on students’ note-taking practices or the impact of supplementary notes and videos on classroom interaction. However, classroom observation showed that this student cohort had higher level of engagement in interactive classroom exercises during lectures, tutorials and practical sessions throughout the module. Thirdly, the present study only examined one part of the module in one programme in medicine, i.e. the graduate entry programme. This may limit generalizability of any results from this study to that particular programme. Future research should address the impact of note access in a different medical programme to see if these results can be reproduced.

Conclusions

This study supports the provision of detailed explanatory notes and videos in addition to PowerPoint lecture slides. We demonstrated that students’ attendance in this first-year medical degree course was not adversely impacted by making these additional resources available before lectures. In terms of academic performance, the supplementary notes seemed to be particularly useful to the low-performing students in this cohort more than highly achieving students. Videos on another hand were useful for short-term recall of information. Finally, students in this class liked the use of supplementary notes/videos and found them useful to their learning of cardiovascular Physiology as part of this programme.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

This study was approved by the Social Research Ethics Committee (SREC) in UCC (Log 2018-028).

Consent was required before taking part in the survey (Supplementary material). Participation in the survey was voluntary and anonymous.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Teaching, Learning, & Professional Development Center

• Teaching Resources
• TLPDC Teaching Resources

How can I use PowerPoint more effectively?

Prepared by david forrest                                                                                 see the pdf version, introduction.

When used thoughtfully, presentation software such as PowerPoint and Keynote (Macintosh) can be very powerful teaching tools. Conversely, when used poorly, these programs can dilute and distract from your lesson. Below are some philosophical tips for focusing your use of presentation software in the classroom. At the bottom of this page are links to a tutorial, demonstration videos, and Texas Tech's policy for conference presentations. (Though the following tips apply to all presentation software, because of its widespread popularity, this paper will primarily discuss Microsoft PowerPoint.)

Decide the Role(s)

PowerPoint can play a variety of roles in your lecture. Below is a list of suggested roles that PowerPoint may serve in your class. For you, PowerPoint might serve one or a combination of these purposes. Decide the role or roles that you want PowerPoint to play in your classroom and clearly communicate those roles to your students.

• Lecture outline : PowerPoint can be an effective means for communicating the structure of your lesson.  Use the first or second slide to give students an overview of the main points to be discussed.  Then insert transition slides that cue students when you are moving to the next point in your lecture outline.  This will help them follow a long lecture and stay focused.
• Note-taking aid for students : Some instructors choose to have students take notes from the PowerPoint slides. If so, take care to keep your text to a minimum word count. PowerPoint is not well-suited to deliver lengthy definitions. Textbooks are better suited for that type of content. Also, the more time students spend transcribing information from the PowerPoint, the less attention they will likely give to anything the instructor says. This can seriously frustrate students who feel they have to choose between focusing on two things at once. An effective technique for using PowerPoint as a note-taking aid is to use fill-in-the-blank slides. (See Example 1.) Make a slide with key words and terms missing. After discussing the missing information with the class, advance the PowerPoint show to a slide with the missing information filled in. This technique will help communicate to your students what information is noteworthy as well as engage them actively in the presentation.

Example 1: Fill-in-the-blank Slides

Notice that this is a very different role than “lecture prompt for instructor.” Combining these two roles effectively requires a conscious understanding of the different types of information that might appear on the screen and what you expect the students to do with that information.

• Visual Aid : PowerPoint was designed to be a visual aid.  (See Example 2.)  Graphs, charts, and photography communicate very well in PowerPoint as do complicated or detailed diagrams that would take too long to reproduce on the chalkboard.  Just like with text, keep your images to a minimum.  Excessive text and/or graphics can distract students from the chosen concept and upstage your lecture.  Be sure that everything that appears on the slide relates to your topic.  Google Images is a great resource for finding online graphics.  (Be aware that some images are copy written and some websites charge a fee for their images.)

Example 2: Visual Aid Slides

• Timed quizzes : There are a number of creative, nontraditional uses of PowerPoint.  One is to put simple quiz questions on individual slides and setup the show to transition at timed intervals.  This type of quiz can be effective for drilling simple recall content.  Be sure and number the quiz questions and add a transition sound to alert students when a slide changes.

Do not rely on PowerPoint to deliver the lesson content.  PowerPoint should play a supporting role to the lead actor, the instructor.  In the words of Patrick Winston, your presentation tools should be the “condiment to your entrée.”  If you allow your PowerPoint to upstage you then the students will tune you out and miss the important material.

Whichever role(s) you choose for your presentation software, maintain consistency.  Students appreciate consistency and can similarly be confused by inconsistency.  Students can get frustrated when the purpose of the PowerPoint changes without warning.  If, for example, the first 10 slides are simply organizational prompts for the instructor, don't be surprised when students don't automatically write down the key terms on slide 11.  Similarly, if the first 10 slides are note-taking slides then the students will be likely to start transcribing whatever appears on slide 11 whether it is intended for that purpose or not.

Appearance: Less is more

Keep the appearance of your slides simple.  Consider the two slides in Example 3 as a visual catalogue of do s and don't s in PowerPoint slide design.  Both slides introduce the same content but the slide on the left suffers from a host of distractions that would impede students' ability to synthesize and focus on the important lecture content.  Below are some simple tips for producing focused, legible slides.

• Background : Use a plain, neutral background.  Patterned or photographic backgrounds can be distracting.  Backgrounds with severe changes in contrast can make the text hard to read.
• Content : Avoid information overload. 
• Keep text and graphics to a minimum. 
• Avoid clip art. 
• Leave space around text and graphics; don't overlap. 
• Use the slide to focus the students' attention and leave the details to lectures and textbooks.  If you need to put more information, make a new slide. 
• Don't include irrelevant information.
• Font : Choose simple, easy to read fonts in either black, for light backgrounds, or white, for dark backgrounds.  Make sure your font is large enough to read.  Most fonts need to be at least 24 point in order to be legible.
• Animation : If you choose to use animation, keep it simple too.  “Appear” and “Fade” are the only custom animation tools you need in a lecture format.

Example 3: Complicated vs. Simple Appearance

To post or not to post Some professors and departments have great success posting their PowerPoint documents online for students to download and review.  Others have reported lower attendance and participation when students know that they will be able to get the notes online.  Many students appreciate the study assistance that online PowerPoint notes offer.  The trick is to communicate that downloading the PowerPoints is not a substitute for attending class. Here are some tips for making the most of freely available PowerPoint shows.

• Use an outline format for your PowerPoint (see “decide the role” section above).  Providing the formal structure of the lesson will help focus students' independent study without feeding them the detailed information in the lecture.
• Use a fill-in-the-blank approach to your PowerPoint (see “decide the role” section above).  For the online version of the PowerPoint, replace key terms or definitions with blanks.  Again, this will help students focus their study or catch up on a missed class while maintaining the importance of class attendance.
• As with all things that you post online, be aware of any copyrighted information that may be embedded in your PowerPoints including images and quoted material.

Murphy's Law of Technology

Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.  Think of all of the individual components that need to be present, functional, and compatible in order to deliver a PowerPoint show to your class: computer, operating system, PowerPoint software, your PowerPoint document, computer to projector connection, projector, screen, clicker, electricity (extension chords and/or power strips in older buildings).  When transferring a PowerPoint document from one computer to another via email, website, or thumb drive, each of the components listed above could present their own conversion or compatibility issues.  If the font you used to create your show is not available on the presentation computer, the text could show up as gibberish.  If your show includes sound you may have to deal with internal volume controls, external volume controls, and speakers.  Laptops are often dependent on battery life.  A host of connection and security issues can arise if you choose to make use of network or online tools.  The classroom computer may use a different version of PowerPoint than your work computer.  The projector connection wire may not interface with your laptop.  Many of these components are out of your control and each is an opportunity for failure.  It is an awful feeling to have spent time preparing a quality lesson only to have the students watch you and the nearest computer tech try to diagnose and fix a technical problem for the greater part of class.  Here are some tips for avoiding disaster, making the most of class time, and ensuring a quality lesson.

• Always prepare a backup plan .   Assume that there will be a technological failure of some sort and be prepared to conduct class without your PowerPoint show.  This may mean preparing a paper handout or developing a familiarity with your PowerPoint such that you could write the salient concepts on the board.  (This is another reason to keep your PowerPoint shows simple.)  Consider preparing an alternative, “rainy day” lesson that could substitute at any point in the semester.  This would allow you to delay the planned lesson for another day and resolve the technological issue after class.
• Practice your PowerPoint show with the exact equipment you will use one day beforehand.  This is especially important if you are using unfamiliar equipment or equipment that may be used by other people.  With many classroom machines, you have no control over which settings another user may have changed.  Scheduling a quick test run will give you an opportunity to discover, diagnose, and resolve any issues before the students arrive.
• Do your best to limit the number of components outside of your control.  Individual situations will vary depending on classroom setup, department policies, etc.  If possible, use the same computer to develop and project the PowerPoint document.  This will ensure that there are no issues with different PowerPoint versions, operating systems, hardware performance, font translation, animation changes, etc.
• Get to know the technology support staff in your building or the building in which you teach.  Ask them about equipment reservation procedures for the rooms where you teach.  Make note of their phone number and email in case you need technological assistance.

The best strategy for incorporating all of the above advice is to create your PowerPoint show after you have completely planned the corresponding lesson.  Working from a complete lesson will ensure that the main content is in your lecture and that your PowerPoint show is supportive in nature, clear, and, if necessary, expendable.

Online Resources

• Faulkner, D. (2008) “PowerPoint and the Art of Student Dis/Engagement,” videotaped presentation at the The Teaching, Learning, and Professional Development Center.  Click here for video
• This session explores the "how" and the "why" of using PowerPoint, not only as an efficient medium for information, but also as a tool that can compel your students to participate actively. Topics addressed include effectively using animations and templates, and incorporating video.
• Jobs, S. (2001) Introduction of the first iPod --   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN0SVBCJqLs
• Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computers, is famous for using a less-is-more approach to presentation software.  This YouTube video exemplifies his presentation style.  Notice his use of short, focused text, plain backgrounds, and clean graphics.
• PowerPoint Tutorial -- http://www.electricteacher.com/tutorial3.htm

There are many tutorials available online.  This one from ElectricTeacher.com is pretty straight forward for the PowerPoint beginner.  This tutorial is complete with screen shots (from Office 2007) to show you exactly how to find each button. 

• Texas Tech Identity Guidelines -- http://www.depts.ttu.edu/communications/identityguidelines/idguidelines/ttu/commsystem/presentations.php
• Refer to this site for TTU policies regarding PowerPoint slideshows for conferences presentations.  The site includes downloadable templates of how presentations should appear.

Contact TTU

How-To Geek

6 ways to create more interactive powerpoint presentations.

Engage your audience with cool, actionable features.

Quick Links

• Add a QR code
• Embed Microsoft Forms (Education or Business Only)
• Embed a Live Web Page
• Add Links and Menus
• Add Clickable Images to Give More Info
• Add a Countdown Timer

We've all been to a presentation where the speaker bores you to death with a mundane PowerPoint presentation. Actually, the speaker could have kept you much more engaged by adding some interactive features to their slideshow. Let's look into some of these options.

1. Add a QR code

Adding a QR code can be particularly useful if you want to direct your audience to an online form, website, or video.

Some websites have in-built ways to create a QR code. For example, on Microsoft Forms , when you click "Collect Responses," you'll see the QR code option via the icon highlighted in the screenshot below. You can either right-click the QR code to copy and paste it into your presentation, or click "Download" to add it to your device gallery to insert the QR code as a picture.

In fact, you can easily add a QR code to take your viewer to any website. On Microsoft Edge, right-click anywhere on a web page where there isn't already a link, and left-click "Create QR Code For This Page."

You can also create QR codes in other browsers, such as Chrome.

You can then copy or download the QR code to use wherever you like in your presentation.

2. Embed Microsoft Forms (Education or Business Only)

If you plan to send your PPT presentation to others—for example, if you're a trainer sending step-by-step instruction presentation, a teacher sending an independent learning task to your students, or a campaigner for your local councilor sending a persuasive PPT to constituents—you might want to embed a quiz, questionnaire, pole, or feedback survey in your presentation.

In PowerPoint, open the "Insert" tab on the ribbon, and in the Forms group, click "Forms". If you cannot see this option, you can add new buttons to the ribbon .

As at April 2024, this feature is only available for those using their work or school account. We're using a Microsoft 365 Personal account in the screenshot below, which is why the Forms icon is grayed out.

Then, a sidebar will appear on the right-hand side of your screen, where you can either choose a form you have already created or opt to craft a new form.

Now, you can share your PPT presentation with others , who can click the fields and submit their responses when they view the presentation.

3. Embed a Live Web Page

You could always screenshot a web page and paste that into your PPT, but that's not a very interactive addition to your presentation. Instead, you can embed a live web page into your PPT so that people with access to your presentation can interact actively with its contents.

To do this, we will need to add an add-in to our PPT account .

Add-ins are not always reliable or secure. Before installing an add-in to your Microsoft account, check that the author is a reputable company, and type the add-in's name into a search engine to read reviews and other users' experiences.

To embed a web page, add the Web Viewer add-in ( this is an add-in created by Microsoft ).

Go to the relevant slide and open the Web Viewer add-in. Then, copy and paste the secure URL into the field box, and remove https:// from the start of the address. In our example, we will add a selector wheel to our slide. Click "Preview" to see a sample of the web page's appearance in your presentation.

This is how ours will look.

When you or someone with access to your presentation views the slideshow, this web page will be live and interactive.

4. Add Links and Menus

As well as moving from one slide to the next through a keyboard action or mouse click, you can create links within your presentation to direct the audience to specific locations.

To create a link, right-click the outline of the clickable object, and click "Link."

In the Insert Hyperlink dialog box, click "Place In This Document," choose the landing destination, and click "OK."

What's more, to make it clear that an object is clickable, you can use action buttons. Open the "Insert" tab on the ribbon, click "Shape," and then choose an appropriate action button. Usefully, PPT will automatically prompt you to add a link to these shapes.

You might also want a menu that displays on every slide. Once you have created the menu, add the links using the method outlined above. Then, select all the items, press Ctrl+C (copy), and then use Ctrl+V to paste them in your other slides.

5. Add Clickable Images to Give More Info

Through PowerPoint's animations, you can give your viewer the power to choose what they see and when they see it. This works nicely whether you're planning to send your presentation to others to run through independently or whether you're presenting in front of a group and want your audience to decide which action they want to take.

Start by creating the objects that will be clickable (trigger) and the items that will appear (pop-up).

Then, select all the pop-ups together. When you click "Animations" on the ribbon and choose an appropriate animation for the effect you want to achieve, this will be applied to all objects you have selected.

The next step is to rename the triggers in your presentation. To do this, open the "Home" tab, and in the Editing group, click "Select", and then "Selection Pane."

With the Selection Pane open, select each trigger on your slide individually, and rename them in the Selection Pane, so that they can be easily linked to in the next step.

Finally, go back to the first pop-up. Open the "Animations" tab, and in the Advanced Animation group, click the "Trigger" drop-down arrow. Then, you can set the item to appear when a trigger is clicked in your presentation.

If you want your item to disappear when the trigger is clicked again, select the pop-up, click "Add Animation" in the Advanced Animation group, choose an Exit animation, and follow the same step to link that animation to the trigger button.

6. Add a Countdown Timer

A great way to get your audience to engage with your PPT presentation is to keep them on edge by adding a countdown timer. Whether you're leading a presentation and want to let your audience stop to discuss a topic, or running an online quiz with time-limit questions, having a countdown timer means your audience will keep their eye on your slide throughout.

To do this, you need to animate text boxes or shapes containing your countdown numbers. Choose and format a shape and type the highest number that your countdown clock will need. In our case, we're creating a 10-second timer.

Now, with your shape selected, open the "Animations" tab on the ribbon and click the animation drop-down arrow. Then, in the Exit menu, click "Disappear."

Open the Animation Pane, and click the drop-down arrow next to the animation you've just added. From there, choose "Timing."

Make sure "On Click" is selected in the Start menu, and change the Delay option to "1 second," before clicking "OK."

Then, with this shape still selected, press Ctrl+C (copy), and then Ctrl+V (paste). In the second box, type 9 . With the Animation Pane still open and this second shape selected, click the drop-down arrow and choose "Timing" again. Change the Start option to "After Previous," and make sure the Delay option is 1 second. Then, click "OK."

We can now use this second shape as our template, as when we copy and paste it again, the animations will also duplicate. With this second shape selected, press Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, type 8 into the box, and continue to do the same until you get to 0 .

Next, remove the animations from the "0" box, as you don't want this to disappear. To do this, click the shape, and in the Animation Pane drop-down, click "Remove."

You now need to layer them in order. Right-click the box containing number 1, and click "Bring To Front." You will now see that box on the top. Do the same with the other numbers in ascending order.

Finally, you need to align the objects together. Click anywhere on your slide and press Ctrl+A. Then, in the Home tab on the ribbon, click "Arrange." First click "Align Center," and then bring the menu up again, so that you can click "Align Middle."

Press Ctrl+A again to select your timer, and you can then move your timer or copy and paste it elsewhere.

Press F5 to see the presentation in action, and when you get to the slide containing the timer, click anywhere on the slide to see your countdown timer in action!

Now that your PPT presentation is more interactive, make sure you've avoided these eight common presentational mistakes before you present your slides.

The world is getting “smarter” every day, and to keep up with consumer expectations, companies are increasingly using machine learning algorithms to make things easier. You can see them in use in end-user devices (through face recognition for unlocking smartphones) or for detecting credit card fraud (like triggering alerts for unusual purchases).

Within  artificial intelligence  (AI) and  machine learning , there are two basic approaches: supervised learning and unsupervised learning. The main difference is that one uses labeled data to help predict outcomes, while the other does not. However, there are some nuances between the two approaches, and key areas in which one outperforms the other. This post clarifies the differences so you can choose the best approach for your situation.

Supervised learning  is a machine learning approach that’s defined by its use of labeled data sets. These data sets are designed to train or “supervise” algorithms into classifying data or predicting outcomes accurately. Using labeled inputs and outputs, the model can measure its accuracy and learn over time.

Supervised learning can be separated into two types of problems when  data mining : classification and regression:

• Classification  problems use an algorithm to accurately assign test data into specific categories, such as separating apples from oranges. Or, in the real world, supervised learning algorithms can be used to classify spam in a separate folder from your inbox. Linear classifiers, support vector machines, decision trees and  random forest  are all common types of classification algorithms.
• Regression  is another type of supervised learning method that uses an algorithm to understand the relationship between dependent and independent variables. Regression models are helpful for predicting numerical values based on different data points, such as sales revenue projections for a given business. Some popular regression algorithms are linear regression, logistic regression, and polynomial regression.

Unsupervised learning  uses machine learning algorithms to analyze and cluster unlabeled data sets. These algorithms discover hidden patterns in data without the need for human intervention (hence, they are “unsupervised”).

Unsupervised learning models are used for three main tasks: clustering, association and dimensionality reduction:

• Clustering  is a data mining technique for grouping unlabeled data based on their similarities or differences. For example, K-means clustering algorithms assign similar data points into groups, where the K value represents the size of the grouping and granularity. This technique is helpful for market segmentation, image compression, and so on.
• Association  is another type of unsupervised learning method that uses different rules to find relationships between variables in a given data set. These methods are frequently used for market basket analysis and recommendation engines, along the lines of “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” recommendations.
• Dimensionality reduction  is a learning technique that is used when the number of features (or dimensions) in a given data set is too high. It reduces the number of data inputs to a manageable size while also preserving the data integrity. Often, this technique is used in the preprocessing data stage, such as when autoencoders remove noise from visual data to improve picture quality.

The main distinction between the two approaches is the use of labeled data sets. To put it simply, supervised learning uses labeled input and output data, while an unsupervised learning algorithm does not.

In supervised learning, the algorithm “learns” from the training data set by iteratively making predictions on the data and adjusting for the correct answer. While supervised learning models tend to be more accurate than unsupervised learning models, they require upfront human intervention to label the data appropriately. For example, a supervised learning model can predict how long your commute will be based on the time of day, weather conditions and so on. But first, you must train it to know that rainy weather extends the driving time.

Unsupervised learning models, in contrast, work on their own to discover the inherent structure of unlabeled data. Note that they still require some human intervention for validating output variables. For example, an unsupervised learning model can identify that online shoppers often purchase groups of products at the same time. However, a data analyst would need to validate that it makes sense for a recommendation engine to group baby clothes with an order of diapers, applesauce, and sippy cups.

• Goals:  In supervised learning, the goal is to predict outcomes for new data. You know up front the type of results to expect. With an unsupervised learning algorithm, the goal is to get insights from large volumes of new data. The machine learning itself determines what is different or interesting from the data set.
• Applications: Supervised learning models are ideal for spam detection, sentiment analysis, weather forecasting and pricing predictions, among other things. In contrast, unsupervised learning is a great fit for anomaly detection, recommendation engines, customer personas and medical imaging.
• Complexity:  Supervised learning is a simple method for machine learning, typically calculated by using programs like R or Python. In unsupervised learning, you need powerful tools for working with large amounts of unclassified data. Unsupervised learning models are computationally complex because they need a large training set to produce intended outcomes.
• Drawbacks: Supervised learning models can be time-consuming to train, and the labels for input and output variables require expertise. Meanwhile, unsupervised learning methods can have wildly inaccurate results unless you have human intervention to validate the output variables.

Choosing the right approach for your situation depends on how your data scientists assess the structure and volume of your data, as well as the use case. To make your decision, be sure to do the following:

• Evaluate your input data:  Is it labeled or unlabeled data? Do you have experts that can support extra labeling?
• Define your goals:  Do you have a recurring, well-defined problem to solve? Or will the algorithm need to predict new problems?
• Review your options for algorithms:  Are there algorithms with the same dimensionality that you need (number of features, attributes, or characteristics)? Can they support your data volume and structure?

Classifying big data can be a real challenge in supervised learning, but the results are highly accurate and trustworthy. In contrast, unsupervised learning can handle large volumes of data in real time. But, there’s a lack of transparency into how data is clustered and a higher risk of inaccurate results. This is where semi-supervised learning comes in.

Can’t decide on whether to use supervised or unsupervised learning?  Semi-supervised learning  is a happy medium, where you use a training data set with both labeled and unlabeled data. It’s particularly useful when it’s difficult to extract relevant features from data—and when you have a high volume of data.

Semi-supervised learning is ideal for medical images, where a small amount of training data can lead to a significant improvement in accuracy. For example, a radiologist can label a small subset of CT scans for tumors or diseases so the machine can more accurately predict which patients might require more medical attention.

Machine learning models are a powerful way to gain the data insights that improve our world. To learn more about the specific algorithms that are used with supervised and unsupervised learning, we encourage you to delve into the Learn Hub articles on these techniques. We also recommend checking out the blog post that goes a step further, with a detailed look at deep learning and neural networks.

• What is Supervised Learning?
• What is Unsupervised Learning?
• AI vs. Machine Learning vs. Deep Learning vs. Neural Networks: What’s the difference?

To learn more about how to build machine learning models, explore the free tutorials on the  IBM® Developer Hub .

Get the latest tech insights and expert thought leadership in your inbox.

The Data Differentiator: Learn how to weave a single technology concept into a holistic data strategy that drives business value.

Get our newsletters and topic updates that deliver the latest thought leadership and insights on emerging trends.