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Home / Publishing Slides in Powerpoint Failed Try Publicating Again

Publishing Slides in Powerpoint Failed Try Publicating Again

  • Journal Listing
  • Front Psychol
  • PMC4189377

Front Psychol. 2014; v: 1138.

Expiry to weak PowerPoint: strategies to create constructive visual presentations

Rodney Thousand. Schmaltz

oneSection of Psychology, MacEwan University, Edmonton, AB, Canada

Rickard Enström

twoDepartment of Decision Sciences and Supply Chain Direction, Schoolhouse of Business, MacEwan Academy, Edmonton, AB, Canada

Received 2014 Aug 18; Accepted 2014 Sep 19.

Keywords: instruction resources, PowerPoint, presentation software, educational media, visual design

The trouble with powerpoint

In that location is nothing more frustrating than sitting through a presentation bombarded by slide subsequently slide of modest text, hard to read graphs, irrelevant clip art images, and poorly designed templates. Often to blame is the use and corruption of PowerPointone (e.1000., Tufte, 2003; Bumiller, 2010). Academics typically but suffer weak PowerPoint presentations at conferences, while academy students may be exposed to them several times a solar day for an entire semester. Strong PowerPoint presentations enhance student date and help students retain data (e.g., Susskind, 2005), while weak PowerPoint slides tin lead to distraction, boredom, and impeded learning (Savoy et al., 2009).

The authors of this paper became interested in improving their PowerPoint slides after observing several presentations that desperately misused PowerPoint, and realizing that they fabricated many of the same mistakes. Our slides used standard, boring templates; were text heavy, and included grainy gif images—embarrassingly, some of which were even animated. For example, Figure ​ 1A contains a slide that was prepared for a lecture in an introductory psychology class. The slide uses a template that makes the text difficult to read, there are several lengthy bullets, and the photos are likewise small-scale. To make matters worse, the instructor had the slide heavily animated—bullet points flew in, swirled around, and even fabricated sound. Needless to say, students were non impressed.

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(A) A poorly designed slide. This slide relies on text-heavy bullets. The photos are likewise small, and the text does non stand out confronting the background. (B) Another arroyo to presenting the information in (A). Unnecessary text is removed, the photos are enlarged, and the content is broken downward into two separate slides. The instructor should hash out the textile in the bullet points on the slide in (A), but it need not be printed on the slide.

Outstanding PowerPoint slides will not save a weak lecture; however, weak PowerPoint will certainly diminish a potent one. The purpose of this brief article is to provide some basic suggestions and resources for instructors who wish to ameliorate their PowerPoint presentations, and in doing so, create more engaging and informative lectures for students.

The basics of powerpoint

For the most part, graduate school does not train instructors how to properly utilize presentation software. Excluding basic slides provided by publishing companies, instructors are given little guidance on what a PowerPoint presentation should expect like. The software itself does not provide any assistance. Upon opening PowerPoint, users are presented with standard templates with space to add a championship at the top of the slide, and a block of text to add bullet points. For the most function, this has been shown to be an ineffective means to convey data (Garner and Alley, 2011). Whenever possible, we recommend fugitive the use of templates that are included with PowerPoint. The images on the templates are tired, equally templates with images that look the best tend to be the ones that are used the about.

Creating a well-designed PowerPoint presentation is not intuitive (Kosslyn et al., 2012), and then where should an instructor look for guidance? Fortunately, there are many excellent resources. Books such as Presentation Zen (Reynolds, 2012), Slide:ology (Duarte, 2008), and Presentation Secrets (Kapterev, 2011) focus on design, and provide a different manner of budgeted PowerPoint. From these resources, and the literature on design, educational and cognitive psychology, we can find some bones points that should be considered when using PowerPoint for lectures.

Font and text

Beyond aesthetics, font option has an touch on on how students process data. For example, Song and Schwarz (2008) presented students with instructions for an exercise routine that was printed in either an piece of cake-to-read font, or one that was hard to read. The researchers found that students who read the instructions in a hard-to-read font were less willing to make the exercise a part of their daily routine, and perceived the practise as requiring more than fourth dimension to consummate than those students who read the same instructions in a articulate font. Other researchers take found a similar impact with difficult-to-read fonts (e.thou., Schwarz, 2004; Rhodes and Castel, 2008; Sanchez and Jaeger, 2014). A poorly called font can negatively bear on the perception of the material, and the perception of the presenter themselves (Oppenheimer and Frank, 2008). Even an announcement equally monumental every bit the discovery of the Higgs Boson tin can be marred by a bad font. Comic Sans was used in the presentation of the discovery, and received mockery in the press (due east.thou., Urquhart, 2011). Font selection may seem inconsequential, but can have a major bear on on a presentation.

Presenters should be wary of the colors used for presenting text and graphs. Color-blindness is non uncommon. For this reason, slides should not take color schemes with red on green or bluish on yellow. For the most role, we recommend using either white on black, or black on white. While having white text on a black background can pb to some bleeding of the text, information technology has been our experience that students are still able to see the material clearly. This is not to say that all slides should be but black and white. Text boxes can exist placed over graphics and images, assuasive for variety in the slides, and clarity in the text (run into Effigy ​ 1B). While the research on the platonic font is mixed (e.g., Duarte, 2008), Mackiewicz (2007) recommends Gill Sans as a safe choice.

Animations

When PowerPoint was first available, there was a sure novelty to having text fly onto the screen, spin around, flare-up into flames, and wing out. The reality at present is that students are used to these effects, and they are more distracting than anything else. At that place are times when animations are necessary, such as when an instructor may non want all of the text on a slide to exist available at once to students. While it may exist useful for separate points to appear on the screen at dissimilar times, there should be no distracting animations (Daffner, 2003).

Videos and images

The choice of images or graphics is important. Verbal information supplemented with advisable images is better retained than information presented simultaneously with both graphics and text (Mayer, 2009). This ways that students remember more if instructors speak to images on a slide, rather than images and redundant text (i.e., bullet points that reiterate what the speaker is discussing). That said, images and graphics must be chosen carefully. The images used on a slide must be consistent with the bulletin of the presenter. Images that are superfluous or inconsistent with the instructor's exact output may actually hinder student retention (e.chiliad., Bartsch and Cobern, 2003). Instructors should also be certain to avert low-resolution images (i.east., no less than 1600 × 1200 pixels), clipart, or images with watermarks. A grainy image with a watermark is distracting and may come across as unprofessional. The same is true of clip fine art. Including clip art in a presentation is somewhat dated, and again, is often viewed as unprofessional (Alley, 2013). Fortunately, there are a number of resources available to find suitable imagesii.

Videos should be embedded in presentations. Relying on an internet connection to stream content tin be risky and break upward the flow of the presentation. There are numerous sites available to legally download video content. Instructors that are concerned with copyright issues should check with the copyright specialist at their institution.

Keeping the to a higher place points in mind, let us revisit Figure ​ 1A. A better approach to this slide is to remove unnecessary text, overstate the images, and break the unmarried slide downward into two separate slides, as nosotros see in Figure ​ 1B. With this approach, the instructor can identify the focus on the images, which is critical in this example, and speak to what the students are viewing. This is far more engaging than reading the bullet points off of the slide in Effigy ​ 1A.

The educatee experience

In our experience, students demand some preparation to deal with PowerPoint presentations that are non loaded with text. Equally students have become used to seeing text-heavy slides, many take gotten into the routine of simply writing down everything that is on the slide and moving on. With less text on slides, and graphics that heighten the key points of the instructor, students need to pay attending to what is actually being said in the classroom. Every bit well, students are not going to be able to write downwardly everything, equally some are previously accepted to. At the get-go of the term, nosotros provide students with an overview of how the slides are going to wait also give instruction on how students can go active listeners. Students are taught to mind for central points, minimize the amount of note taking and maximize the amount of attending that is spent on what the teacher is maxim. In that location tin can certainly be an aligning menstruum for students. Still, we typically observe that attendance goes up, student engagement increases and grades improve.

Who has the time?

Between writing grants, collecting information, writing papers, and preparing lectures, there is intense pressure placed on instructors. To try to minimize the fourth dimension spent on preparing lectures, many instructors understandably spend piddling time creating PowerPoint slides, or merely use slides provided past the publisher. Unfortunately, publisher slides tend to be text heavy, and ofttimes do zero more than regurgitate textbook textile. While many instructors wish to improve their slides, there is a common concern that there is simply not enough time to do then. In our experience, properly created slides actually accept less time to create than the more than commonly used text-heavy slides with a header and several bullets. Nosotros encourage instructors to wait at their current slides and consider if the images on the slides are complimenting what is being said and if the text is enhancing the lecture. If the answer to either of these questions is negative, the instructor needs to decide whether to end using PowerPoint—which is not necessarily a bad selection, we have both seen brilliant presentations that did not use PowerPoint—or how to change things for the better.

One benefit of updating and enhancing PowerPoint slides is that it forces instructors to think about the content of their course. If at that place is not an image, or pocket-size amount of text that can explain a concept, it could be that the concept does not lend itself to the style of PowerPoint—in that instance, PowerPoint should not be used. Information technology might also be that the instructor is non familiar plenty with the textile to be able to create an appropriate slide. We constitute that when updating our lectures, topics that we were comfortable with were easy to present with minimal text and an appropriate image. This was more challenging for topics that nosotros were less comfortable with. This forced us to review our class textile, and ultimately, improve the quality of the lectures.

As previously mentioned, many instructors apply the slides provided by publishing companies. While nosotros debate these slides don't stand well on their own, they still have value. The publisher'due south slides contain the basics from the textbook, and may exist useful every bit a way to frame lectures. These slides could exist considered an outline of what may be covered, and then contradistinct to reduce text, add meaningful images or graphs, and supplemented with relevant examples from the literature.

Final thoughts

Student engagement can be difficult, as students take more than temptation than ever to tune out from a wearisome lecture. Laptops, phones and tablets all contain the lure of social media, surfing the web, text messaging, or simply reading a magazine or book, and this can all be done nether the guise of listening to a lecturer. Effective PowerPoint presentations can forbid student distraction and facilitate a better student experience. There is no need for students to endure substandard presentations, and equally such, we claiming all instructors to put weak PowerPoint to rest.

Conflict of interest argument

The authors declare that the inquiry was conducted in the absence of whatever commercial or fiscal relationships that could be construed equally a potential conflict of involvement.

Footnotes

1Note that in this article we are using the denotation PowerPoint to refer to any presentation software (e.g., Keynote, Impress, etc.).

2Google images offers a wide selection of gratis images, though there may be copyright issues. Other valuable online resources include Getty Images, iStock Photo, Flickr Artistic Commons, and Everystockphoto.

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Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4189377/