Most advice about using Microsoft PowerPoint is geared toward business users. Experts speak of creating presentations that entertain and motivate, while acknowledging which listeners may only absorb a small amount of information within one sitting. But if you're the teacher, let's say within high school or perhaps college, your goals are usually different. Rather than motivating students to act or perhaps make a decision, you want them to learn. Ultimately they will end up being tested about content. You want to be able to grab your students intellectually, not necessarily necessarily emotionally.
Should you use PowerPoint at all? If so, when and also how? Teachers want in order to know whether PowerPoint slideshows will help their students to be able to learn, or perhaps hinder them. And because the education presentation and also those utilized in business are different animals, teachers at all levels need in order to reconsider the actual standard business use of text and also images, just how best to be able to organize their slides, as well as how to be able to take advantage associated with PowerPoint's Notes feature.
The Mayer multimedia principles
The psychology professor at the actual University associated with California, Santa Barbara, Richard E. Mayer has studied the particular way students learn from visuals as well as lectures. Within his book, Multimedia Learning (Cambridge University Press, 2001), Mayer summarizes his research about how people learn when they see and hear multimedia content, taking into account the actual various combinations regarding words as well as pictures.
Mayer's work outlines several multimedia principles, the main a single stating that people learn better from words and pictures than from words alone. He also notes that not all educational material lends itself in order to a visual representation, yet when appropriate, visuals may help students learn. In addition, people learn better when words are usually near corresponding pictures as well as there will be no extraneous information nearby in order to distract attention.
What should a PowerPoint-using educator take from this particular? And how do you know when a good image will be extraneous? Some teachers suggest not necessarily using images at all, not even logos or templates, unless it will be necessary for explaining the content, the material is very difficult, or perhaps students need aid understanding the particular topic. Remember, students are usually tested about facts and also processes, not on the particular images.
So before you place a great image on the lecture slide, consider the following:
* Is it specifically related to be able to the text upon the slide?
* Would leaving out the actual image remove crucial information?
While scholarly arguments about the usefulness of visuals inside teaching may not really be final, one thing is actually certain -- you don't use images inside an educational setting the actual way you perform in any business setting. "When within doubt, leave it out" will be a good motto for educators.
Keep slides organized
According in order to Mayer's redundancy principle, people understand more when they hear the particular text, compared with when they both hear and see the particular text. This in itself will be surprising, because it seems to be able to contradict the particular most typical way PowerPoint will be used inside business and in education -- to display text onscreen because the presenter reads it aloud. Exceptions to be able to this education principle tend to be when technical terms tend to be taught or even when content must end up being repeated for novices in order to the topic at hand.
The main advantage regarding this technique for teaching is actually that students must listen to take notes. When you put all associated with your points on the slides, students naturally will just write down the actual text they see about the slide, assuming that's what you'll test them about. When you elaborate on any of the points, students will assume this particular verbal content isn't important, because you didn't put it upon the slides.
To put this kind of principle into practice, make sure just your main topics are usually included about the slide, however not all of your individual points. Then elaborate about your main points orally inside your lecture. Keep within mind that the PowerPoint document is not necessarily your presentation; what you say is actually your presentation.
Best note-taking practices
Should you encourage students in order to take notes while you speak, must you give them your notes, or perhaps both? And how can you use your PowerPoint presentation o help students study later?
Asking students to be able to listen without taking notes works best when your lecture covers basic concepts. But if the actual lecture consists mostly of facts students will need to recall later, having them take notes is the better strategy.
There are three options within PowerPoint in order to consider.
Option 1 - Have students take notes as you speak, and also provide them with lecture notes afterward. This will be easy if the teacher has utilized the Notes pane in PowerPoint to print out Notes Pages.
Option 2 -- Distribute any handout made up regarding each of your slides printed with lots regarding white space alongside for note-taking. This option will be helpful if students are tending in order to omit items the particular teacher considers important. The handout gives students any skeletal outline associated with your main points for later review. And the particular more white space you give them, the more notes they will take.
Option 3 -- Transfer the particular presentation into the word-processing file. In PowerPoint, from the particular file menu, select send to microsoft office word. Inside the Send to Microsoft Office Word dialog box, choose the Blank Lines Next to be able to Slides option (Example). (Nevertheless, this option creates less note-taking space.)
The main advantage of this approach will be that within Word, you may modify the particular handout's layout easily. For example, you can easily insert any page break at the actual end from the last line associated with each slide so each slide will print over a separate page. (You can easily also add more lines.)
Good teaching will be paramount
While all associated with these principles should be helpful, you might want to do additional research on your own. For instance, if you have two lectures that are similar inside set up, try delivering a single with the PowerPoint presentation and also one without. Give a quiz at the particular end of each class and also compare the results. You can easily easily compare some other types associated with PowerPoint presentations side by side. Try teaching with a slideshow which incorporates graphics and images, after that use the slideshow without this kind of visual elements. See whether providing students with a great outline (and also space in order to take notes) at the beginning of a lecture has any different effect or even result than handing out the actual notes at the particular end. By experimenting with these as well as other variations you'll come up with the system which is more effective for you and also your students.
Of course, you can find plenty of other factors outside of multimedia presentations in which affect student learning. It's safe to say the teacher's skills tend to be still more important than the particular visual method employed to deliver the course's curriculum. Nevertheless, all of us can all use any little aid with our teaching, and a PowerPoint slideshow that enhances, rather than detracts from or perhaps slows down, the actual learning process is actually all to be able to the good.
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