How many times have you sat in a classroom or lecture and thought I'd rather stick a pen in my eye than sit through this tedious, brain numbing or *yawn* boring session? You know the ones - where the presenter reads every single word from the power point slides or where each slide contains paragraphs of information - too much to take in! What about when the presenter flips through the slides at such a rapid rate that your brain turns to scrambled egg trying to make sense and reason out of it all! The list goes on... over crowded slides, too many bullet points, under use/over use of multimedia or digital images etc... Please stop that- it's killing me! I don't want to die right here in this PowerPoint presentation!
POWERPOINT IS A CREATIVE BALANCING ACT - too much or too little of one thing is generally a bad thing!
Last year I was involved in a 3 month course whereby on every lecture day PowerPoint presentations were used to supposedly 'enhance' the learning. During the grave yard session (after lunch) I used to find great amusement in watching people fight off the heavy eyes and do everything within their power to 'stay awake'. Great techniques were used like stretching, moving around in the chair, blinking hard, breathing deeply, and lastly the rub of the eyes and the fight with the eyelids. Eventually these people would succumb to a bit of shut eye and 'nod off' for a while - very entertaining for me too see but it's not funny in the sense of the effectiveness of the presentation or in the achievement of the desired learning outcomes.
So from the 3 month course what I can I remember a year down the track? Some of the images, some of the diagrams, most of the digital video presentations, some of the sound effects but interestingly very little of the words.
After learning more about PowerPoint as a teaching and learning tool my opinion of it has changed - it's no longer just a slide presentation to me. When used effectively PowerPoint can be an extremely useful tool in establishing a 'multi-sensory' learning environment, reinforcing learning and scaffolding the learning. The world itself is a multi-sensory environment therefore our brains are accustomed to multi sensory stimulation for learning. Furthermore studies reveal that "uni-sensory stimulus regimes do not engage multi-sensory learning mechanisms and, therefore, might not be optimal for learning" (L. Shams & A. Seitz, n.d.). In addition to this learners may have differing learning styles and a multi-sensory approach aids in catering for these differences.
Let's think about the senses that we can stimulate through effective usage of PowerPoint as a 'carrier' of information... The first is quite obvious: the visual sense which includes but is not limited to - text, words, sentences, images, diagrams, pictures, visual signs, digital video and visual movement. The auditory sense: sounds and sound effects, music, voices and voice recordings/spoken word. Kinaesthetic involvement - interactive slides that incorporate physical involvement be it with a key board, a mouse, digital pen, voice and or video recorder. Taste and smell do get a little difficult to 'describe' or 'show' only so can be reinforced separately.
Allow me to elaborate using chocolate as an example... I have prepared a lesson on 'manufacturing'. I have used PowerPoint to take us on a tour of a chocolate manufacturing facility with the use of digital images, words, diagrams, recordings, sound effects, interactive slides and digital video. The presentation was a learning success but I now want to add to it. I have organised a block of chocolate from the factory that we just toured. We can now enhance the learning by smelling, touching and tasting the chocolate. Hand in hand, the learning is now completely multi-sensory and the likelihood of complete comprehension and retention looms high. Another benefit is that we have not even stepped foot out of the classroom to do so! What may have taken a day's excursion has now been covered in just over an hour.
Having had chance to use PowerPoint and reflect upon it as a teaching and learning tool I have come to the conclusion that PowerPoint is similar to a carrier pigeon in that it 'carries' a message from learning manager to learner and at times visa versa. The pigeon will always deliver a message whether it be effective, less effective or even relevant depends on what is tied to its foot:)!
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