Day Nine Teaching Evening (and Extended Time) Classes

In more than one previous post, I shared tips for managing your class time in ways that minimize mental fatigue, promote engagement, capture and recapture attention to assist students in staying focused on learning. Interspersing active learning activities with short lectures/presentations is one of those strategies. Let’s think a bit more about those short lectures. Many of us choose to use various types of visual aids when lecturing. Today I thought we would review some practical tips for using PowerPoint (or other visual aids) to support those short lectures/presentations.

For years, PowerPoint pundits included recommendations such as:

• Don’t use full sentences on the slide, unless it is ONE sentence to prompt discussion (e.g., quote).
  
• Avoid distracting background graphics that make it difficult to read the text.
  
• Limit each bullet to one line of text with 6 or fewer words, and each slide to no more than 3 bullets.
  
• Choose one animation for making each bullet point appear (mixing animations is distracting).
  
• Use a font type and font size that is easy to read from any place in the room (usually a minimum of 24 pt).
  
• Select a template that is pleasing to the eye (i.e., color) and provides good contrast between the background color and the text. Research even shows that white on dark is better than dark on light.

When using text on our slides, these “rules” still make sense. However, since those early recommendations, PowerPoint has become ubiquitous. My guess is that you all use it to some extent. The “death by PowerPoint” criticisms that have surfaced in recent years often center around problems created by presenters who either ignore the above guidelines or follow them while creating and speaking from 75 slides!

Rightfully so, PowerPoint tips nowdays tend to focus on what is really needed….. effective, persuasive presentations. If PowerPoint is used to enhance that presentation, then the tips assume the above list of guidelines, and instead, address additional recommendations, such as:

• Start the presentation with an idea and a focus, not a PowerPoint slide.
  
• Use a minimum number of slides to convey the key points that fit the learning outcome and audience. Even in a long evening class, your short presentations might each include 1-3 slides because much of the content is contained in your lively discussion with the students. Remember, it is about THEIR learning. If adding a graph or chart will help the students remember the keypoint, fine, but more words…..no.
  
• Use a minimum number of words and more graphics/images/photos to illustrate what YOU are saying out loud. This helps your students because they don’t have to choose whether to read and write down what is on the screen OR listen to you! This keeps you from reading the slides and gives them a visual to anchor the ideas to! It helps you encourage spontaneous discussions, rather than feeling married to a scripted slide of text.
  
• Press CTRL-H to make the cursor invisible during the presentation (moving cursors are very distracting). If you need to see the cursor to point to something specific, press CTRL-A and it will appear again.
  
• Avoid dimming the lights; you want the focus to be on you, not the screen most of the time. Move around a lot while presenting and use a wireless mouse to advance any slides. PowerPoint is not the focus of your presentation, the content is, as it is being delivered by you and experienced by you and your students together.
  
• Provoke the class to think, come up with new ideas, provide examples, suggest solutions…throughout your presentation.
  
• If you are demonstrating a web site, it is best to use a free, virtual magnifying glass to enlarge the portion of the screen you are emphasizing (http://magnifier.sourceforge.net/ ) so that the text or image is large enough to see.

If you have worked most of your professional life on putting your ideas into words and reversing that process to turn into a visual person is a real challenge, you might like to borrow one of my books on visual presentations to get ideas. They are really great!

What other tips would you like to share with the rest of us on using PowerPoint effectively when “presenting” content to your students?