The suggestions that follow will help you create effective PowerPoint presentations.

Know your audience. You must be fully aware of what the audience is expecting from your PowerPoint; also, be aware of your audience’s education level—the complexity of your text and visuals must match what the audience will understand.

Create an outline to help you develop your PowerPoint presentation. The outline gives your PowerPoint the structure it requires, allows you to develop a balanced array of visuals, and gives you an initial look at the time required for students to view your PowerPoint slides. Your PowerPoint should not be so long that the audience loses interest, and if you have a set amount of time, you need be sure your PowerPoint fits within that time.

Become familiar with all features of PowerPoint. PowerPoint is a powerful presentation tool with many features that allow you to jazz up your slides, import other slides, add audio and video, change background styles and colors, etc. Spend whatever time it takes to fully familiarize yourself with all that PowerPoint offers; you’ll be able to develop a more professional and engaging PowerPoint presentation—something your audience will appreciate.

Do not become dazzled with the “whistles and bells” of PowerPoint. It is easy to be seduced by the over-the-top features of PowerPoint, such as transition and animation. Yet too much use of these will distract from the primary purpose of your PowerPoint: getting important information to your audience in an easy-to-understand manner. Certainly, some of these fun tools can help make your PowerPoint more engaging and can spotlight especially salient items in your presentation. But be careful that your PowerPoint does not turn into a Disney cartoon, resulting in a presentation that is less than effective. Overall, keep the design simple and basic.

Limit each slide to a few bulleted points. Your audience needs to quickly understand what you are presenting. Many folks load up each slide with far too much text. This defeats the purpose of a PowerPoint presentation. Keep each slide to no more than four bulleted items, with each item a maximum of one line in length. If you need to add more information, you have two options: (1) have some notes (use your outline for this) and simply add the material—by voice—when appropriate; and (2) at the bottom of each blank slide there is a section called “Speaker’s Notes”—you can add in here what you want to say to your audience beyond what they see on a slide (only you can see the Speaker’s Notes).

Use graphics to highlight your information, not overtake it. A visual on a slide won’t take the place of your text—and it shouldn’t—but it can highlight a point you are making and help to engage the audience. Have a nice balance of visuals and colors, and spend some time searching for the spot-on, already-created visual. (There are many sources: online, your own, items you’ve scanned, etc.) You also can create your own graphs and/or charts and use screenshots of items.

Your voice can truly bring a PowerPoint to life. In an online PowerPoint presentation, the audience hears more of your voice than if you were in a room with them. Thus, each clearing of your throat, sip of water, “um” and “uh,” and licking of the lips can often be heard. Speak slowly; be sure to vary your tone (no one enjoys a monotone!); stay enthusiastic and excited about the topic; and use your voice to bring audience attention to important points, closing of a subject, introduction of the next slide, etc.

Always do a slideshow run of your PowerPoint to view it as an audience member. You’ll find one of the drop-down menu items on the top tool bar of PowerPoint is called “Slideshow.” Here you have various choices that allow you to view your PowerPoint as a slideshow. Be sure to do this so you will see what your audience will see and you can quickly pick up on items that might need to be corrected, such as typos, font size, size of or lack of visuals, too much text on a slide, length of time for the PowerPoint, etc. And for each slide, make a note (e.g., #14—correct spacing; #15—OK; etc.). Once completed, make the changes and then run the slideshow again.

Check spelling, grammar, spacing, font size and style, etc. It is crucial that all components of writing be perfect. Be sure that the font size and style are easy to read. Consider line spacing and visual placement.

Always do a trial run with at least one other person. While we will see items that need to be corrected or tweaked, rarely do we see them all. Have one person or more look at it to get their input. You’ll be surprised at how many helpful suggestions you will receive about things you had not considered or just didn’t see. Your audience will benefit from this extra input.

Errol Craig Sull has been teaching online courses for 17 years and has a national reputation in the subject, and in writing about and conducting workshops on distance learning. He is currently putting the finishing touches on two online-teaching books.

Excerpted from Teaching Online With Errol: An Online Educator Must: Creating the Perfect PowerPoint!Online Classroom, 12.4 (2012): 6.

How Can I Create More Effective Mini-Lectures?

Program includes a CD with the video presentation, plus supplemental materials, PowerPoint slides, and complete transcript • $99

Active learning brings many benefits to the college classroom, but no matter how much emphasis your curriculum places on engaging students, sometimes you still have to disseminate information. Learn how to deliver effective mini-lectures that resonate with your students in How Can I Create More Effective Mini-Lectures?, a Magna 20 Minute Mentor.

Based on research in cognitive and educational psychology, and integrating best practices from business and teaching theories, this fast and focused session offers you the insights you need to upgrade your teaching and the practical guidance to help you get started.

You’ll learn proven techniques you can use immediately to transform your lectures from necessary evils to persuasive presentations. Drawing on her extensive classroom and faculty development experience, presenter Christy Price, Ed.D., an award-winning educator from Dalton State College, demonstrates how educating and motivating students gets easier when you develop mini-lectures that are based on how the brain works. She’ll also show you how to help students retain what you teach through:

• Guided practice
• “Zen presentations”
• Relevant course content
• Embedded classroom assessment techniques
• Positive experiences for student learners

Watch a brief clip from the program

The human brain is, by nature, a novelty seeker. In this session you’ll discover how to stop fighting the brain’s natural tendencies and, instead, put them to work engaging students. Price’s tips are so practical you’ll be able to use them in your next class session.

With its balanced blend of theory and practice, How Can I Create More Effective Mini-Lectures? shows you the whys and hows of developing an effective presentation. You’ll learn:

• Techniques to facilitate student memory processing through lecture notes
• The optimal time length for a mini-lecture
• Design elements you should and shouldn’t use in classroom presentations
• The key ingredients of a Zen presentation
• Practices great communicators use to connect with audiences
• Content and stylistic guidelines to make sure your mini-lectures are engaging students

Understanding the best ways to deliver an effective presentation — capable of engaging students and communicating essential course content — will help you and your students achieve learning goals.

Magna 20 Minute Mentors are developed by and for busy faculty who are committed to the pursuit of excellence in higher education. This session focuses on the needs of classroom faculty.

Price’s engaging speaking style, combined with her detailed recommendations of additional resources, make How Can I Create More Effective Mini-Lectures? an ideal program for mid-career higher education professionals as well as new instructors. You also will receive checklists, lists of dos and don’ts, and detailed recommendations regarding what it takes to create persuasive mini-lectures.

How Can I Create More Effective Mini-Lectures? includes a CD with the video presentation, supplemental materials, a critical reflection worksheet, a copy of the PowerPoint slides and the program’s transcript.

Want to make this program available for your entire campus?

Consider ordering a Campus Access License for an additional $100. It allows the purchasing institution to upload the CD of the seminar onto the institution’s password-protected internal website for unlimited access by the entire campus community.

However, chances are you’ll need to make extensive changes — both to your existing PowerPoint slides, and to how you deliver them. Typically, this means scripting the lecture before narrating and recording it so that all information presented online is:

• As concise as possible
• Organized logically (no skipping around)
• Relevant to the important concepts you’re trying to convey (as opposed to spending equal time on minor points or details)
• Rich with stories, personal examples, and/or examples that clarify and amplify the important concepts
• Primarily visual (very little text presented on any screen)
• Broken down into separate 2-7 minute recordings, each based around a single concept

Unfortunately, there’s no quick and easy way to adapt face-to-face lectures for effective online presentation. Simply recording yourself narrating your PowerPoints as you would in a face-to-face classroom is ineffective because the online environment differs from the classroom in several ways:

• The time and attention students are willing to spend watching a screen is much less than the time and attention they’re willing to spend watching a live human being lecturing.
• The online environment is poor at conveying information in text form (but excels at conveying information visually).
• Online students can’t ask questions in real-time—and you won’t be able to see when they’re “getting it” so that you can diverge from your standard lecture and supplement their understanding. Therefore, your presentation has to be extremely clear and explicit.
• Online students are typically much less tolerant of extraneous or confusing information presented in a recorded lecture than they are of an in-person lecture.
• Students will be accessing lecture recordings differently—and for different reasons—than they “access” face-to-face lectures. Face-to-face students come to class, listen to lecture, and leave. Online students may use lecture recordings for previewing material, as their main source of course content, or for review. They may access recordings never, once, or multiple times for any of all of these reasons.

All of this means that you’ll need to rethink the way your existing lectures are organized, what information they contain, and how that information is conveyed.

Below are best practices for converting a PowerPoint presentation for online delivery:

• Break long lectures into five minute (or so) chunks. Studies show that online students won’t sit through hour-long lectures—so don’t create them. Instead, create a handful of smaller lecture “chunks,” each of which defines and elaborates a main concept. Chunking lectures in this way also makes it possible for online students to customize their learning by reviewing—and re-reviewing—only those concepts they’re having trouble grasping.
• Write a script for each concept. Speaking off-the-cuff may work in a classroom, but it doesn’t online. Scripting forces you to organize the presentation of your material—to make sure you don’t leave anything out or throw in anything extra. It also gives you time to think about the most effective approach to convey material in the highly visual online environment. If you decide not to write a script beforehand, be prepared to spend the same amount of time you would have spent on the script in the recording studio instead, recording and re-recording your lecture chunks (in effect, scripting your recordings during the recording process instead of beforehand.) There really is no way around the scripting step in the production of effective content optimized for online delivery; it’s “pay me now or pay me later.”
• Rework your PowerPoint slides to act as a storyboard for your script. Your PowerPoint slides should contain mostly visuals; you’ll need to reduce text to a few words per screen at most. Animations (recorded PowerPoints) are good at conveying visual information; they aren’t good at conveying text information. Any text that appears on the screen should be the “take aways” or critical notes you would expect students to take, not simply explanations or nice-to-have details.
• Time any text or images that appear on your PowerPoint slides to display at the same time that you, the narrator, speak the text or discuss the image. Studies show that presenting text causes students to try to read it—which means they’re missing whatever the narrator happens to be saying at the same time. Learning theory also suggests that displaying images and talking about them later isn’t as effective as introducing the images at the very time you begin speaking about them.

For some PowerPoint design examples, both good and bad, go here »

Emily A. Moore, M.Ed., is an instructional designer in the online learning office at Texas State Technical College – Harlingen Campus.

One of the points made in the post was affirmed in the commentary. PowerPoint is a tool and that means how it affects learning depends on how it’s used. Tim H. said it clearly and succinctly, “Any statement you can make about PowerPoint, good or bad, can also be made about any other presentation method—chalkboard, overhead projector, etc. PowerPoint is only a tool.”

Most folks who commented use PowerPoint and they do for a number of different reasons. A Guest pointed out that it’s “crucial” in making information “accessible” for students with learning challenges or for whom English is not their first language. Jana M. elaborates in a different direction: “PowerPoint is excellent for the introverted, visual and to some degree auditory learner. However, the tactile, extroverted, verbal learners will quickly become bored and lose the desire to learn.” J. Hardy noted what is repeated in a number of comments, “PowerPoint is an effective tool for showcasing schematic models or diagrams or presenting pictures of key features. . . .” Laurel writes, “Lecturers can often forget to emphasize the ‘four most important points’ as they teach, and all of us learners want to know what those are and why. Creating a good PowerPoint reinforces that information for everyone.” LAB offers a particularly pithy summary. He/she uses PowerPoint “to show my students pictures of places and processes they’ve never encountered.”

Some commented that using PowerPoint benefits the teacher. I hadn’t thought of that before. Dave P. explains. “Preparing PowerPoint slides may be a useful exercise for faculty members because it forces them to think about, organize, and prioritize the material to be covered in a particular lesson.” Dave T said, “Some of the best teaching ideas come as one is preparing a PowerPoint presentation.” Follow-up question: How do we balance these teacher benefits against giving students the opportunity to learn how to organize material on their own? And how do we avoid Bernd S.’s concern that using slides can increase “presentation speed to unacceptable levels”?

A number of comments correctly noted that my post omitted discussing the many other PowerPoint enhancements beyond bulleted points and other forms of texts—enhancements like video clips, websites, blogs, polls, clickers, hot links and various forms of animation used by teachers. Dave L. writes “PowerPoint. . . used as more than a projector for ‘words’ or ‘organization’ promotes interest and should assist learning.” 45Doc70 notes that PowerPoint “gives faculty an incredible amount of creativity.”

Fewer comments decried the use of PowerPoint but those that did listed objections like these. Christopher H. wrote, “Intended or not, PowerPoint is an instrument of faculty control in the classroom. It inhibits interaction, squashes student creativity and inquisitiveness, interferes with faculty responsiveness, and reduces students to passive consumers of knowledge. . .” Keith D. has observed a “depressing number of professors who have no idea how to use such programs. I have seen slides with up to 75 to 100 words on them. . .hour and a half lectures with 50 or 60 slides.” Jana M notes that when there are too many slides “students sit back like they are watching a movie instead of taking notes and asking questions.” Joanne A. shared a comment from a student who loved PowerPoint “because he didn’t have to do anything.”

It was a good exchange with folks doing what I had hoped: revisiting their use of PowerPoint—what they do and why they do it. Thanks to all who contributed! It would be equally useful for students to revisit (or maybe visit for the first time) the role of PowerPoint in their efforts to learn. What does it contribute? When is it a crutch? What learning skills does it develop? It would be interesting for faculty to then ponder students’ perspectives.

Too often we forget how significantly teaching practices shape learning experiences and PowerPoint is a perfect example. It has redefined “what a lecture looks like, consists of, and how it’s experienced,” according to one source quoted in the article (p. 254). Add to that how regularly PowerPoint is used these days. Sixty-seven percent of the 384 students surveyed in this study reported that all or most of their instructors used PowerPoint, another 23% said that at least half their instructors used it and 95% said that their instructors who used PowerPoint did so in all or most class sessions.

The article reviews studies that have looked at the influence of PowerPoint on performance in the course and course grades. Most studies find that PowerPoint has “no measurable influence on course performance and minimal effect on grades.” (p. 243) Yet students often report a favorable view of PowerPoint, saying it helps them with learning, content organization and note taking. The students in this cohort confirmed these positive effects.

What students in this study said they liked about PowerPoint is part of my concern. When asked to identify those features of PowerPoint they found most helpful, about 80% said the software organized lecture content and indicated which points were most important. Eighty-two percent said they “always,” “almost always,” or “usually” copy the information on the slides. Does copying down content word-for-word develop the skills needed to organize material on your own? Does it expedite understanding the relationships between ideas? Does it set students up to master the material or to simply memorize it?

And then there’s the potential of PowerPoint to oversimplify the material. What students need to know is reduced to a bulleted list of five items described in five words or less. (I know, not always.) That does make complicated material more manageable for students and perhaps that’s beneficial, but does it fairly and accurately represent the nature of the material we are asking students to learn? Do the lists convey any sense of context? Do they hint at the complex relationships that exist between and among items on the list?

I also worry that using PowerPoint encourages passivity. Well-designed PowerPoint presentations can be graphically impressive. They do add a great deal of interest and without question make it easier to listen and follow along. But do they encourage interaction? Do they promote critical thinking? Possibly, but often they make having discussions more difficult. The lights are partially dimmed and the seats arranged so that everyone focuses on the screen. Those aren’t features that foster the vibrant exchange of ideas.

Finally, faculty in this survey and other studies report that using PowerPoint improves their teaching. It certainly does help with organization and with keeping teachers on track, but PowerPoint does not easily accommodate those digressions that are necessary to respond to what’s happening at the moment. I do know that some of us digress too much, but there’s a spontaneity to good discussion that fits uncomfortably with a predetermined sequence of slides.

Like so many instructional practices, PowerPoint is not inherently good or bad. It’s all about how we use it and that’s not something about which we can afford to be complacent. Please consider this post an invitation to revisit the role of PowerPoint in teaching and learning. Yours might be an individual assessment, or it might be a conversation that explores assets, limitations and how to make the most of PowerPoint’s potential to improve teaching and promote learning.

What are some of your reasons for using, or not using, PowerPoint? Please share in the comment box below.

Reference: Hill, A., Arford, T., Lubitow, A., and Smollin, L. (2012). “I’m ambivalent about it”: The dilemmas of PowerPoint. Teaching Sociology, 40 (3), 242-256.

In a previous article, I explained how to write a script for narrating your slides. Here I will provide a set of tips to prepare for recording narration that sounds good to your students. Some of these tips come from Tom Kuhlmann (www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning) at Articulate, the authoring tool I use most often for recording narrated PowerPoint slides.

Why should you care that your narration sounds good? Let me put it this way: poor-sounding narration makes it harder to listen and makes the narrator sound less professional. So here are some tips that will help you sound professional and clear.

Tip 1: Use a decent microphone
If you are going to be recording narration regularly, you should invest in a decent microphone. Good doesn’t mean expensive. I use the Plantronics DSP USB headset microphone and Kuhlman says he has good luck with this headset microphone as well.

Many experts, including Kuhlmann, suggest using a unidirectional desktop microphone (rather than an omnidirectional desktop microphone). That’s because unidirectional microphones record your narration from one direction only and are less likely to pick up noise coming from other directions (such as the whoosh coming from the vents in the ceiling). A number of people recommend the Samson Go Mic Compact USB Microphone. Also consider using a microphone pop filter to help prevent the popping Ps that are common when recording your voice.

Tip 2: Prepare the environment
Recording studios have special walls that dampen the sound. Most of us aren’t going to set up a real recording studio in our homes or offices, but we should do what we can to produce audio that doesn’t sound like it was recorded inside the mall or near the television with children yelling and the phone ringing.

The place where you record should ideally be quiet and far from the action. It should ideally have a carpeted floor, furniture, and heavy curtains that will dampen the sound. You should avoid a space with bare furniture and uncovered walls. That’s because you’re looking for a place that doesn’t echo. Then you’ll want to reduce as much background noise as possible:

• Shut the door.
• Let those around you know you are recording and need quiet.
• Turn off or cover air vents.
• Close windows and blinds or curtains.
• Unplug office machines and the phone. Put your cell phone in another room.
• Check to see if your chair squeaks when you move. If it does, oil it or get another chair!
• Place the microphone away from your computer (computer fans are noisy) and the microphone cord away from your computer’s power cord.

Believe it or not, most walk-in closets work for recording because clothes dampen the sound! Cubicles are also designed to absorb sound, so they may work well if there isn’t too much going on nearby or in the halls. Or better yet, find a smallish room with a cubicle and a door you can shut. Or pin up quilts, blankets, or egg-crate foam on the walls.

If recording at your desktop computer isn’t going to work because of noise, consider recording into a portable device and going somewhere you can control the noise. You could use your laptop or portable recorders made for this purpose. But doing this means you need to transfer your files from the portable device and then sync the files with your slides (unless they are on the laptop you are using), so this option may be less desirable because of the extra work involved.

Tip 3: Record using the same environment
This may not be intuitive, especially if you are just getting started with recording narration, but you will be doing retakes, sometimes at a different time than when you recorded the original narration. If you record in the same place each time using the exact same setup, you’ll be better able to match the sound of your narration from one recording session to another, and that’ll make it easier to swap in rerecorded narration.

In addition to using the same room and setup for recording, you’ll want to use the same microphone, same recording distance (between you and the microphone), same recording settings, same computer, and so on.

Tip 4: Practice recording
Before you start recording for real, you’ll want to practice and do some test recordings lasting 20 to 30 seconds each. You’ll want to evaluate the test recordings for sound clarity, background noise, and voice level. Try moving the microphone toward you and away from you to find the best recording distance. The best distance for your microphone is typically 6 to 12 inches from your mouth.

Some people find that they get better audio if they stand up while recording. That’s because many people tend to slouch when sitting, and slouching makes you breathe more irregularly and may make your voice less clear.

Some people tend to speak very quickly when recording, and this makes you sound rushed. Because you are aiming for a friendly, conversational tone, you may need to practice with the script in order to slow down and make it sound like you are talking directly to your students.

Patti Shank, PhD, CPT, is a widely recognized information and instructional designer and writer and author who helps others build valuable information and instruction. She can be reached through her website: www.learningpeaks.com.

Excerpted from Online Teaching Fundamentals: Making Online PowerPoint Content Engaging: Preparing for High-Quality Narration. Online Classroom (February 2011): 4,5.

The purpose for using PowerPoint in a presentation is to support you and your message. In an online presentation, you are still the presenter and you should be there. Narration lets you connect with students and set the context for the presentation. In this article I’ll discuss preparing a narration script for use when narrating your slides.

Why a script?
Don’t think that you can just “wing it” when narrating your slides. I supposed there are some people who can do this, but I can tell you that even with a script, it’s hard to get it exactly right without doing a number of “takes.” For one thing, it’s really easy to trip on your words even with a script. So it’s inevitable that you’ll record narration multiple times in order to sound the way you want to sound. If you try to do it without a script, there’s a good chance that you’ll need to rerecord a multitude of times, more times than if you prepare a script.

In addition, writing a script helps you think through the sequencing of your slides and the best way to present what you are talking about. Once you start adding narration text to go along with your slides, you’ll see holes in your presentation where you need to add slides and places where you need to change the order of the presentation. So the script helps you think through the best way to present your content.

Preparing the script
Writing a narration script is about writing words for students to hear, not read. And that difference makes all the difference.

To write listening-friendly scripts, you’ll want to do some things a bit differently than when you are writing for reading. Audio should sound friendly and conversational. Use contractions and feel free to use sentence fragments, just like you would use in conversation. Use a friendly tone.

Practice reading the script aloud before you narrate the slides and fix anything that sounds stuffy or awkward. When reading your script aloud, you are bound to find words, phrases, and sections that need rewriting. Try to use less complex sentences, because complex sentences can be confusing to follow. Complex sentences can be reread when written, but having to replay an entire slide is more frustrating than rereading a sentence.

Write the script so that you aren’t tempted to ad-lib. What I mean is, if you think it might be good to put in a few comments that sound off-the-cuff, write them into the script, and don’t try to ad-lib them while narrating.

Plan audio “white space” and try not to talk too long on a given slide. If you have a block of dense text, plan where you will stop and take a breath and write it in the script as WAIT or BREATHE. If you have a lot of text on a single slide, consider how to make your wording more concise; if you need to keep all the text, consider dividing the narration among two or more slides.

Creating narration scripts in PowerPoint
PowerPoint makes it very easy to create a narration script. Simply write the narration that goes along with each slide in the Slide Notes pane that appears below each slide in Normal View, as shown below.

Once you enter the narration for each slide, output the script by selecting Publish from the Office button in the top left corner (PowerPoint 2007 and 2010) and then selecting Create Handouts in Microsoft Word> Notes next to slides.

PowerPoint will send thumbnails of your slides and the narration (notes) for each slide script to Microsoft Word and you’ll have a Word document with each slide and the corresponding narration. An example of one row of the table created during this process appears below.

In this section, I’ll be discussing the research surveys and questions related to synchronous e-learning. Although technologies such as chat and IM are considered synchronous e-learning, I’ll be mainly talking about virtual classroom technologies here

Voila! Your narration script! To use this Word narration script, I print it and use it when narrating my slides.

Patti Shank, PhD, CPT, is a widely recognized information and instructional designer and writer and author, who helps others build valuable information and instruction. She can be reached through her website: www.learningpeaks.com.

Reprinted from Online Teaching Fundamentals: Making Online PowerPoint Content Engaging: Writing a Narration Script. Online Classroom (January 2011): 4,5.

For all of these reasons and more, today’s student body is a highly diverse group with many different learning challenges, often manifesting in problems with notetaking and listening comprehension. All of this creates what Keith Bain calls an “accessibility imperative.” And although there are many legal obligations that institutions must satisfy with regards to accessibility, Bain says recording and transcribing lectures can improve retention and success for all types of students.

In the recent online seminar Tools and Techniques for Improving Course Accessibility, Bain, the international manager of the Liberated Learning Consortium and an adjunct professor at St. Mary’s University, explained the value of digitizing, captioning, and transcribing course material, why you should do it and how.

At the most basic level, Bain said, an instructor could record a presentation with little more than a good lavalier mic or headset and a digital recorder. A more intermediate approach could include using audio recording software like Audacity, PowerPoint narration, or tools such as mp3DirectCut or Power Sound Editor. If the institution has invested in lecture capture systems such as Camtasia Relay, Mediasite, Tegrity Campus, Echo 360 or Panopto, there are even more options and much less work since the recording and synchronization are all automated.

Once the presentation is digitized, the next step is to transcribe it, Bain said, noting that this is often the most difficult aspect of offering students truly accessible course media. Some of the tools Bain recommends for converting speech to text include Dragon Naturally Speaking, Media Access Generator (MAGpie), CapScribe, and InqScribe.

YouTube also offers a captioning feature that Bain called “promising” and there are a few research prototypes with speech recognition based transcription, including an IBM Research’s Hosted Transcription Service and Synote.

During the seminar Bain also shared results of a case study that measured the performance of students who used multimedia notes (recorded lectures with real-time captioning and transcription) against those who used traditional notes. The students who studied using multimedia notes scored better on quizzes and exams.

“Accessibility is not optional but rather a critical success factor,” he said. “At the very simplest level, record your next lecture. At the minimum you can create an auditory based learning object that will greatly enhance learning opportunities for many of your students. I found that a lot of students will listen to these newly created podcasts.”

Learning Styles: Theory and research confirm that students have preferred learning styles that can enhance their learning effectiveness. There are many instruments available to measure students’ learning styles from related literature. The Learning Style Survey developed by Diablo Valley College is a popular online instrument used for determining students’ learning styles, and won an award for “Best Use of Technology in Education for 1999.”

This survey provides immediate results on students’ learning style preferences, which I then use to gauge the amount and types of multimedia to include in PPT lectures. U.S. research suggest that typically, 30 percent of students prefer learning visually (e.g., images, charts, maps, videos, and notes), 34 percent auditorily (e.g., lecture tapes, sound bites, background music, and discussion) and 36 percent kinesthetically/tactilely (e.g., keyboarding quiz answers or comments, and manipulating learning material).

Using these findings as a multimedia gauge for a 30-slide PPT lecture, roughly 30 percent of the slides (9) will contain graphics, 34 percent (10 slides) audio or sound, and 36 percent (11 slides) interactive content (keyboarding, quiz in PPT, animations, and links to possible simulated exercises). I also include any detailed notes within the PPT “Click to Add Notes” feature for the particular slide, so students have all the information on the topic at hand. I would hasten to add that the latter is not absolute and other modalities can be used to present online course content.

Cultural/International Backgrounds: In addition to knowing students’ learning style preferences, I also ask my online students to share a little about themselves including their cultural/international backgrounds. In this way, the online learning community (students and instructor) can have a shared understanding and appreciation of its diversity. Using this information, I can choose graphics, audio, and interactive content that will accommodate for their cultural/international backgrounds in making learning more interesting and stimulating for students. For example, I would not place a black border or rim around pictures of persons as this symbolizes death for Chinese students. The color red can have both negative and positive meanings culturally so I use it sparingly.

Further, while Americans hold their dogs and cats in high esteem, other cultures do not. As such, I am culturally sensitive when using animal graphics. If I have Caribbean students, their infamous reggae, calypso, or steelpan music is included in the PPT audio. In addition, combat scenes are quite acceptable to U.S. students, who are reminded daily of the different wars being fought by U.S. troops around the globe. However, such scenes may appear abrasive to other international students, so I choose course content that will be generally acceptable to all students.

In being sensitive to online students’ learning style preferences and cultural/international backgrounds, I think we can enhance our online PPT lectures in making them easier for students to relate to and learn from effectively.

Debra Ferdinand, PhD, is a recent consulting distance education facilitator with Cipriani College of Labour and Co-operative Studies, Trinidad.

References:
Diablo Valley College (1999). A learning style survey for college. Retrieved August 19, 2010 from http://www.metamath.com/multiple/multiple_choice_questions.html.

Miller, S. C. (2007). Learning styles. Retrieved August 19, 2010, from http://www.4faculty.org/includes/digdeeper/lesson4/learningstyles.htm.

Carlson-Pickering, J. (1999, November). MI & technology: A winning combination. Retrieved August 19, 2010, from http://www.ri.net/RITTI_Fellows/Carlson-Pickering/MI_Tech.htm#Learning%20and%20Our%20Emotions.

But maybe it’s time to (gasp) question the use of PowerPoint itself (stick with me here)! Why do we assume that we must put up an outline of our points to help the audience understand them? The best presentations on TED are not accompanied by a PowerPoint of bulleted lists, but rather photos or other imagery that illustrate a point or make an effect. A speaker might flash the simple word “why” on the screen to prepare the audience for questioning a common belief. A single photo could be used to elicit a laugh or set the tone of the discussion.

One alternative to boring PowerPoint slides is to use Prezi. This web-based tool allows the user to create a single canvas of text, images, videos, etc. online. The presenter flies from location to location on the canvas, sometimes turning elements upside down, sometimes zooming in or out, to explore the relationship between ideas. Like a painter, the canvas draws the developer to choose visual imagery to create the presentation, in contrast to the text-heavy, outline-based methodology of PowerPoint.

The theory behind Prezi is that our ideas are not linear, but rather bundles of interconnected concepts that are better captured as a whole with many parts. Prezi allows the user to illustrate the relationship of concepts to one another.

I have abandoned PowerPoint entirely and now use Prezi exclusively for my presentations. This is a remarkably freeing experience. I find myself shedding my assumptions about what a presentation must be as I explore new ways to present concepts.

The true power of Prezi comes from painting a larger point composed of its constituent elements. For example, a Prezi on learning could start with the word “Learning” and then zoom in on each letter to find that it is composed of the elements that go into learning. The presenter zooms in and out during the presentation to illustrate the complex relationships that exist at different levels of the topic.

Try Prezi for yourself, and then come back and share your ideas for using Prezi in the classroom by entering your suggestions in the comment box below.

Resources

A very funny comedy routine on bad PowerPoints: watch it here »

The Prezi homepage: http://prezi.com/

A great example of how to do a presentation without PowerPoint:
Watch it here »

John Orlando, PhD, is the Program Director for the online Master of Science in Business Continuity Management and Master of Science in Information Assurance programs at Norwich University. John develops faculty training in online education and is available for consulting at jorlando@norwich.edu.

Unfortunately, we’ve all sat through our share of bad PowerPoint presentations. Yet when used correctly, PowerPoint can be an effective way to communicate ideas, share data and transfer knowledge … all without boring your audience to tears.

In the online seminar Enhancing PowerPoint for the Online Classroom and Beyond, Paul J. Gibler, founder of CONNECTINGDOTS and a former lecturer with the University of Wisconsin system, provided tips to help faculty transform their presentations from boring to engaging.

The key, Gibler says, is to incorporate visual elements that enhance what is being said by showing contrast, flow, hierarchy, unity or proximity. And while some presenters make the mistake of overdesigning their slides, Gibler stresses the importance of whitespace.

His text guidelines include choosing a sans serif font like Arial, and then following the KILL (Keep It Large and Legible) and KISS (Keep It Short and Simple) principles. This means things like only one concept per slide, don’t use complete sentences unless it’s a quotation, and the 6×6 rule. The 6×6 rule says that on those occasions when you do have to use bullets on a slide, never use more than six bullets and each bullet should contain no more than six words. Some presenters follow a 4×4 rule.

In the second half of the presentation, Gibler demonstrated tools and techniques for getting your slides online and integrating them into learning management systems, as well as screen capture tools and a Slideshare application for adding audio narration to slide presentations.