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Introduction
l Item Bank
This is a section the Flashlight Evaluation Handbook chapter
on getting feedback to improve your computer presentations
for instruction. This section describes how uses of
PowerPoint and other computer presentations can affect
learning. (At the bottom of this page
is a link to some good sources for criteria for evaluating
and improving any kind of slide show (or for grading the
communications value of slideshows if they're created by
students.)
There are
still a few people around who think that computers are
magic— present something on a fancy computer display and
students will learn better than if more traditional methods
were used. Fortunately, most of us know that's not
automatically true. When instructors use presentation
software such as PowerPoint or a set of pages from the Web,
results depend on how the technology is used
(including but not limited to the content). Depending on
those 'how factors,' learning outcomes may improve, become
worse, or be just the same as before.
Why are the
results of using computer presentations so varied?
After all, one of the more surprising and useful research
findings of the 1980s is that the effect of media on
learning are over-rated: if the same content is presented in
the 'same' way (but with different technology, the learning
outcomes on average are about the same. If I speak these
words to you, or you read them, or you watch me on a
videotape, or you listen to me on streaming audio over the
web, or ....: it doesn't seem to make much difference to
what you can do, or even what you remember after a few
weeks. ("You" in that sentence means people in general.)
But the devil is in the details, and
how the medium is exploited, and how well, can make a
difference in learning. For
example,
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If students can read and
take notes better, course outcomes can be improved.
Presentation software can help students learn if they
have printouts of the slides which they can use during
the lecture to add notes. That way they can spend more
time listening and less time scribbling at top speed.
And the slides are more legible and more reliable than
student notes on the main points. Some faculty make sure
the students can see slides even before they come to
class (by posting them on the Web) so that interested
students can come to class more prepared.
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Presentation software can
sometimes help the instructor present an idea in a
qualitatively different way. Suppose for example, you
want to illustrate a complex process. One way to do
that is to draw the first step of the process on the
blackboard, talk about it, erase the picture, redraw it
to show the next step, and so on. In some cases faculty
have drawn a series of fifty or more such blackboard
images and taken two class periods to illustrate a full
process; students struggle to take notes and later to
review what they think the faculty member drew.
Presentation software could be used to create a series
of 50 slides, each with an explanation. The faculty
member can flip quickly through these slides to show the
process in motion or step slowly through them. If the
slides are made available to students, the student can
review them as quickly, as slowly, and as many times as
needed. Video, too, can play a role in helping students
understand ideas in motion.
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One way to improve learning
outcomes is to offer materials or ideas that the student
would not otherwise have seen. Faculty members who
previously could only use the blackboard may have
consciously or unconsciously avoided teaching content
that requires heavy use of photographs, video, diagrams
or animations. Presentation software can help open new
options for the content of a course. If the new content
is more valuable than what could have been taught
before, then the presentation value has certainly helped
increase the value of the course.
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Presentation software need
not follow the linear slideshow model. Many modern
packages allow the ideas to be linked together in a web,
not just in a line. The instructor, for example, can
create multiple links from one or more slides . such a
web of slides offers more options when the instructor
wants to react to what's happening in the class, moment
by moment. If the slideshow is linked to the World Wide
Web, that further increases the flexibility of the
instructional material.
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Once you begin thinking of
the slides as a resource for use outside the classroom,
other possibilities present themselves. For example,
some packages make it relatively easy to record audio.
This can help students who are more auditory learners
and also fill in the gaps left by the cryptic phrases on
the slides. Students don't memorize every word spoken
in class -- the audio can be helpful for reviewing the
lecture, even for students who heard the lecture days or
weeks earlier.
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Presentation software may
help the faculty member move presentations out of the
classroom altogether, especially if used in combination
with other instructional materials and supports such as
textbooks, online quizzing, and e-mail. If students
come to class with a basic notion of the materials to be
discussed, the classroom can be used for conversation,
debate, practice, coaching and deeper understanding. The
problems don't end there, of course. Suppose you use
those kinds of strategies and some students still seem
unprepared. What was the difficulty? Lazy students?
inappropriate quizzes? Poor online instruction? Working
with several dozen institutions, we already have done a
little thinking about what an assessment package might
look like -- something faculty could use to gather data
to 'debug' their strategies for helping students prepare
before class. If your institution is a
Flashlight subscriber and you would like to work
with us in drafting such a 'course research' strategy,
please send e-mail to
Ehrmann@tltgroup.org).
That's been
the good news. The bad news, of course, is that misuse of
presentation software can also cause a downturn in the
student's experience and in learning outcomes. Here are just
a few of the potential problems:
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PowerPoint (and blackboards) can subtly
encourage the use of fewer words, not always a good
thing!
This article in Wired ("PowerPoint is Evil")
summarizes the views of Edward Tufte on this topic, and
you may not have seen this view of
Abraham
Lincoln's PowerPoint-assisted Gettysburg Address.
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Some faculty members take
advantage of presentation software to zip through more
slides and more ideas than they could previously have
covered, but students can't keep up. The result: ideas
that may have be to the instructor and clear on screen
but are not clear in most students' minds. And the
darkness in the room may make it more difficult for the
instructor to notice that the students in the back half
of the room are out of the picture.
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Sometimes rooms have only
two lighting levels: too light to see the slides or too
dark to stay awake.
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Technology breaks. If the
instructor is not prepared with an "option B" and
"option C" the results can be awkward.
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The metaphor for most
presentations is the slideshow: a preplanned linear
arrangement of ideas. But good teaching is often
adaptive and reactive: shifting in response to student
needs, excitement or confusion. If the teacher allows
the slideshow to dictate the order and pace of ideas,
learning may be the loser.
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Most importantly, research
tells us that students learn more by what they do (and
the feedback that comes to what they do) than from what
is explained to them. Doing, feedback, and explanation
are all important ingredients in the learning recipe. A
physics faculty member once tested his students'
conceptual understanding and realized for the first time
that not even his "A" students really grasped the
fundamental ideas of the course, he exclaimed, "I'm a
good lecturer. I've been teaching physics for 20 years.
And I now realize that you cannot 'tell' people physics.
It cannot be done.' So he shifted to a mode of teaching
that was driven by what students do: experiments,
simulations, exploration, debate. That doesn't
eliminate presentations from the instructor's
repertoire. But it does suggest that many faculty
members rely too much on clear, compelling presentations
and not enough on student action as modes of learning.
For more references on using PowerPoint,
here's an
annotated webliography assembled by Steven Bell when he
was Director of the Gutman Library at Philadelphia
University.
Whether the presentation is created by
students or faculty members, there are criteria (from many
sources, and not always consistent with one another) for
evaluating and improving them.
Here's a good set
of references. You might also want to look at our
resource page on
rubrics.
Introduction
to chapter on productive feedback on your use of computer
presentations l Inventory
(Questions)> |
