It’s not often that you get to see a presentation and think, “Wow.” I’m not talking about the “whoa dude! That was so awesome!” kind of reaction. What I’m talking about is when you know that the message you just heard was exactly what the presenter meant for you to hear, and that the whole experience was simple and clear.
I recently had this experience watching the keynote at Apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference.
Go ahead, chuckle, snort, you can even post a snarky comment about me being an Apple fanboy. It’s alright. Because it’s true. I love Apple and everything they stand for. I’m not saying that they are a perfect organization or that this presentation didn’t have any flaws (in fact, there were two obvious errors in this keynote). It’s just that their simple, direct approach to business, product design, marketing – and presenting – make it so that little, if anything, is misunderstood.
Go ahead and watch just a little bit of it.
Notice how there is rarely any text on the screen.
Beautiful, high quality images are used in place of bullet points.
Simple, easy to read graphs.
Transitions are used appropriately to create emphasis.
Not to mention a clutter free stage, large projector screen, the use of light humor, repetition, seamless transitions between speakers, and more.
Seriously, just watch a bit if you have some time.
The article, and the research done by State University of New York, focus on whether using podcasts as an extra study resource for students can improve grades. I am a huge fan of podcasts. Over the past couple of years I have learned an immense amount by listening to podcasts – from language, to photography, to brain science, and design. On iTunes U anyone can access lectures from some of the best universities in the country by downloading and listening to podcasts of each lecture. This is a great way to acquire knowledge or to get further study for a class you’re currently taking.
What I found even more interesting about this study was the method of teaching and study that wasn’t as effective: handing out printed copies of the lecture slides to students. As the author of the article notes, passing out PowerPoint handouts has become “all the rage” in many lecture halls, within or outside the academic world. In fact, two of my previous science courses are designed around PowerPoint handouts – every slide of every lecture for the entire semester is included in a “Lecture Guide” that the students purchase at the beginning of the semester (sometimes in lieu of a textbook).
What’s the problem with this?
PowerPoint slides are NOT notes. They should not function as notes. Not for the teacher and especially not for the student. Retention increases when exposure to information occurs across multiple modalities – listening to a lecture, reading a textbook, discussing a subject in a study group, etc. (You may be familiar with the idea of being a visual vs. kinisthetic vs. auditory learner.)
A printout of common lecture slides is not much different than the lecture – except that you probably aren’t having them read to you by a Ph.D.
But repitition increases recall, right?
Yes, that is true, but do not forget that certain modalities of learning are less effective than others. As Dr. John Medina points out, “the brain sees words as tiny pictures. Reading creates a bottleneck.” (Brain Rules, pg. 234)
This is just one more reason to do away with text on those lecture slides, replace them with images, and maybe even replace the handouts with a link to the podcast version of your next lecture.
This is a follow up to my previous post on using Full Screen Images in your presentations. I mentioned how important it is to use images that are at least 800 x 600 pixels. Most people tend to grab images that look grainy and pixelated.
In this video, I will show you how to use Google Image Search to limit your image search to high quality images. As mentioned in the video, I do not recommend using Google to find your images since you will likely run into copyright issues. However, it is very probable that you will continue to use images from the web when time, budget, or other constraints prevent you from using license-free stock images, so why not learn how to make small improvements.
I used the slides below for a presentation I gave to an advanced writing course this past September. It was created in Keynote and I presented it using the Pointer app for the iPhone as the clicker.
It won’t make much sense to you by looking at the slides alone, because these slides were simply a visual enhancement to what I was saying as the presenter. This is an important concept to remember when designing your own presentations: the students should pay attention to you, the teacher, and should only refer to your slides when you want them to.
I am working on a stand-alone presentation for Slideshare that will introduce Brain Slides without the need for my explanations as you click through the slides. I will post it soon!
