Integrating PowerPoint into an Interactive Teaching Style
Microsoft PowerPoint has been criticized as a cure for sleeplessness and a medium that constrains the free range of ideas with a drumbeat of bulleted lists (e.g., see E. Tufte, 2003). Despite the well known pitfalls of this software, many faculty and an even greater proportion of students continue to use it as an efficient tool for the presentation of information. PowerPoint can indeed be a useful teaching tool for a number of reasons: most prominently, it is a visual medium through which faculty can supplement verbal methods of delivering information, and it allows for the production of slides that can be displayed in class, posted to a course Web site, and revised for use in subsequent semesters. However, it is best utilized as one tool among many. If you decide to use PowerPoint, you may find helpful the following suggestions for integrating it into a teaching style that uses multiple tools and methods. Note: these suggestions focus on how to integrate PowerPoint successfully into your teaching; they do not include detailed instructions on how to create visually effective slides.
Plan
- Before you begin teaching a course, devote careful thought to whether, when, and how you will use PowerPoint. What are your objectives for student learning? Will PowerPoint help your students learn the knowledge and skills they need to learn? If so, how?
- Sketch out a plan for the content and structure of each class session before you begin building your PowerPoint slides. Then, think about how you can utilize PowerPoint not just to disseminate information, but to incorporate active-learning activities such as discussion and problem-solving. While PowerPoint can offer a means of organizing your thoughts on a topic, it is important that your larger goals for the class session, rather than the slide format, dictate how you will organize the session. Therefore, you should first define your goals for a class session; then, decide how you will organize the session to reach those goals and determine which goals can be met by using PowerPoint. In other words, as you plan the class session, think about how and why you might use PowerPoint: for example, to present an outline of the topics you will cover, to summarize key themes, or to display either text or visuals such as photos, tables, and charts that will be the focus of discussion or problem-solving. Then, think about the other tools you can utilize along with PowerPoint to ensure that the class is as interactive as possible. You can use the chalkboard, a more dynamic visual aid, to record students' answers, solutions, ideas, and questions, or to help students fill in the details that you did not include in an outline projected via PowerPoint. You might also distribute handouts that students have to complete. To test whether your students have learned to identify the important features of an organism (or a poem), for instance, you might use PowerPoint to project an unlabeled diagram of the organism (or unannotated lines from the poem), then ask students to supply the missing labels (or annotations).
Design
- Keep in mind that even for those portions of a class that may be devoted to the straightforward presentation of facts, PowerPoint's bulleted lists and chunks of sequential information do not always offer the best approach. Successive slides that contain lists of bulleted points can leave students in the dark about the "glue" that holds these points together--their significance and the relationships among them. An outline format can be one effective alternative (see below).
- Consider using PowerPoint primarily to display the topics or questions that provide an organizing structure for the lecture or discussion; when possible, use an outline format, which will help students understand the relationships among bits of information that they might otherwise see as unconnected. Overloading the slides with text will create slides that are difficult to read, which can exacerbate the already strong tendency for students to look at the slides rather than looking at you. When this happens, you and your students miss an essential means of communicating. They will miss the important information you are conveying through both verbal and non-verbal means (often the "glue" that the slides are missing), and you will miss the chance to see when they are following you and when you need to slow down or repeat a point or question.
- Do not use the slides as lecture notes. If you fill the slides with the level of detail that should appear in your lecture notes, you and your students will look at the slides rather than at one another.
- Consider using PowerPoint primarily to display visuals such as photos, videos, tables, charts, and graphs. The capacity to display visuals is one of the most powerful uses of the software. Choose your visuals carefully, making sure that each fulfills a specific purpose and appears easy to read when projected on a large screen. Try out the presentation in a classroom to see for yourself how the slides will appear. When using tables, charts, and graphs, simplify their format to make the relevant information easy for the students to see. Remember to save video files separately on the jump-drive on which your presentation is saved. (Video files are not "embedded" in the presentation, as photo files are. Instead, they are included in a presentation as links that point to a separate file that your presentation will not be able to "find" and play if they are not saved separately on the jump-drive.)
- If you post the PowerPoint slides on your course Web site or distribute PowerPoint-generated handouts, make sure that your students know that they should still take notes in class. Again, do not include all the information students need on the slides and handouts, and tell your students that the slides and handouts are incomplete. Otherwise, they will assume the slides and handouts are complete and will be tempted not to pay attention to what you are saying. You can counter-act this temptation by writing additional information on the chalkboard, which will prompt the students to write in their notes or on the handouts, and thereby better learn the information. For a review of a recent study on whether PowerPoint handouts improve student learning, click here. One of the points that this study makes clear is that students do not always take notes, even when you have told them that they should do so. Therefore, consider walking around the room to make sure that students are taking notes. You might also teach students how to take notes effectively by distributing a sample, annotated hand-out.
Interact
- Use your performance skills to captivate and maintain your students' attention. Using PowerPoint can lead the presenter to be less engaging than he or she otherwise might be. Work against this tendency by moving around the room, using gestures, modulating your tone, and integrating opportunities for active learning (for example, by calling on students to ask and answer questions).
- Continually devise methods to maintain an interactive teaching style. Observe your students' reactions, or ask a colleague to observe your class, so that you have an idea of when students are watching you, looking at the PowerPoint slides, and taking notes. Then, adjust your style to ensure that you actively engage your students. For example, if you are teaching in a classroom with a SMART Board, learn how to use the SMART Board to annotate PowerPoint slides.
- Direct your students' attention away from the slides at strategic moments. At some points, you will want to leave the PowerPoint slide "up" while you write on the board or ask your students questions about the slide you are projecting. At other times, you may want to "mute" the projected image so that it is easier to get students to focus on what you are saying or what you are writing on the chalkboard. (Do not turn off the projector, which will take a few minutes to warm up and turn on again; instead, touch "picture mute" on the control panel in the classroom or CTRL-B on your keyboard.) You can also direct your students' attention away from the slides by moving away from the slides and toward your students as you talk. The more interactive you are, the more likely they are to focus their attention on you.
Practice and Prepare
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Do not teach with PowerPoint without having practiced using the technology. Before you use PowerPoint for the first time in class, do a run-through to determine whether you have created too many or too few slides and whether your slides are easy to read and well designed. Moving smoothly between PowerPoint and the chalkboard or other tools requires practice. If possible, practice in the same classroom in which you teach, so that you are familiar with the technology and the layout of the room. If you do not know how to use the multimedia equipment in the classrooms, call The Teaching Center at 935-6810 to set up a training session. If you plan to use PowerPoint in your teaching, call John Pingree at 935-4145 to reserve a classroom with "full multimedia"; to find such classrooms, see The Teaching Center's online classroom directory (select "Yes" under "Full Multimedia, then click "Submit").
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Be prepared to teach without PowerPoint if there is a technical problem. Familiarize yourself with multimedia troubleshooting tips, and call The Teaching Center at 935-6810 if you need help. However, make sure that you know the material well enough that you can begin class without PowerPoint, if necessary.