<story><title>PowerPointless: Digital slideshows are the scourge of higher education</title><url>http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/03/powerpoint_in_higher_education_is_ruining_teaching.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jimmar</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve taught a few college classes. I&amp;#x27;ve experimented with no slides, minimalist slides, and text-heavy slides.&lt;p&gt;Young whippersnappers don&amp;#x27;t seem to know how to take notes--so going with no slides is tough. Students cannot go back and review the lecture to make sure they understood key points. I&amp;#x27;ll use this method for teaching skills--e.g. calculating NPV in Excel--but not for introducing terms &amp;amp; definitions.&lt;p&gt;When I&amp;#x27;ve used minimalist slides, I get a bunch of students complaining that there isn&amp;#x27;t enough detail. I think the lectures are more entertaining and engaging, personally, but for students who want to be able to review the material in preparation for an exam, minimalist slides aren&amp;#x27;t the best. Think about your average Discovery channel show. The shows are interesting and engaging, but if you had to explain everything to a friend later on, or had to take an exam on the material presented, how would you do? Without watching the whole thing over again, it would be hard to absorb all of the material.&lt;p&gt;I hate delivering the text-heavy slides to classes--I often want to skip over some points based on the flow of the lesson, but the doing so might cause confusion later on. Students will ask if they have to know that stuff for the exam.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, they key takeaway for me is to listen to the students and adjust to what they prefer, but not to ignore well-studied pedagogical best practices.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>derefr</author><text>&amp;gt; Young whippersnappers don&amp;#x27;t seem to know how to take notes--so going with no slides is tough. Students cannot go back and review the lecture to make sure they understood key points.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re going to go to the effort of planning a verbal (i.e. text) lecture, and &lt;i&gt;then&lt;/i&gt; re-encoding it as slideshow, all for the purpose of getting students something to review... why not just write down your plan for the lecture--a transcript of what you&amp;#x27;re going to say--and then email it to the students?&lt;p&gt;In fact, ideally, do this &lt;i&gt;before&lt;/i&gt; the lecture. That way, many of the students will have already read through it once, and will be able to ask more thoughtful questions.</text></comment>
<story><title>PowerPointless: Digital slideshows are the scourge of higher education</title><url>http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/03/powerpoint_in_higher_education_is_ruining_teaching.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jimmar</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve taught a few college classes. I&amp;#x27;ve experimented with no slides, minimalist slides, and text-heavy slides.&lt;p&gt;Young whippersnappers don&amp;#x27;t seem to know how to take notes--so going with no slides is tough. Students cannot go back and review the lecture to make sure they understood key points. I&amp;#x27;ll use this method for teaching skills--e.g. calculating NPV in Excel--but not for introducing terms &amp;amp; definitions.&lt;p&gt;When I&amp;#x27;ve used minimalist slides, I get a bunch of students complaining that there isn&amp;#x27;t enough detail. I think the lectures are more entertaining and engaging, personally, but for students who want to be able to review the material in preparation for an exam, minimalist slides aren&amp;#x27;t the best. Think about your average Discovery channel show. The shows are interesting and engaging, but if you had to explain everything to a friend later on, or had to take an exam on the material presented, how would you do? Without watching the whole thing over again, it would be hard to absorb all of the material.&lt;p&gt;I hate delivering the text-heavy slides to classes--I often want to skip over some points based on the flow of the lesson, but the doing so might cause confusion later on. Students will ask if they have to know that stuff for the exam.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, they key takeaway for me is to listen to the students and adjust to what they prefer, but not to ignore well-studied pedagogical best practices.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ryanSrich</author><text>&amp;gt; review the material in preparation for an exam&lt;p&gt;Have you thought about getting rid of exams? Honest question.&lt;p&gt;I had a few progressive professors in college that completely ditched exams and went with either in person exams (think office hours with PG) or all participation and projects. I learned more from those classes than any class I took in all 4 years.&lt;p&gt;I know this style doesn&amp;#x27;t lend itself useful to all subjects but I feel that the academic community needs a massive overhaul in how it tests knowledge retention.</text></comment>