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Faculty Instructional Technology Resources -
Best Practices

PowerPoint

PowerPoint is used in two distinct situations: in support of a live lecture, and in online courses, where PowerPoint serves as a primary source of content when no lecture is possible. It is very important these purposes are not confused - otherwise, your lecture PowerPoint might upstage you, or your online content PowerPoint might not have enough information!

Using PowerPoint to support a lecture

• Use PowerPoint to:
  • outline (not replace) your talk
  • show diagrams, pictures, videos, and sounds
• When you are lecturing, you are the primary source of information.
  • Don't get upstaged by your slides! Keep yourself indespensible by not putting too much information on your slides.
  • Only use 5-6 bullets per slide.
  • Don't use complete sentences
  • Don't use animation, including complex slide transitions - animation draws the eye away from you and away from the text on the slide
  • Print out a slide (one slide on an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper). Drop it on the floor. If you have trouble reading it, your audience will have a hard time reading it on the screen.
• There is little students hate more than listening to someone read their slides verbatim!

Using PowerPoint as a primary content source

• First, only rely on PowerPoint to "stand on its own" as a content source if you can't be there to explain it, e.g., in a distance ed course. If you are going to be there to explain the slides, don't create slides that don't need explanation!
• Then, consider if PowerPoint is the best way to convey your information. It's not good for substantial blocks of text, though it can be very good for pairing diagrams with text.
• One approach is to create (or re-use) the more typical bullet-outline type of slides, then write text annotations in the "Speaker Notes" section. Essentially, you write out what you would otherwise speak in a lecture.
• Instead of simply posting your deck to CTools, turn your slides (or "notes pages" if you have info in the speaker notes section) in PDF format by choosing File Menu --> Print. Choose "Adobe PDF" as your printer and set "Print What?" (usually "Handouts" or "Notes Pages"), then click OK. This will result in a much smaller and easier to print file than simply posting the deck of slides.

PowerPoint plus voice or video

The jury is still out on using voice annotations or "PowerPoint-plus-talking-head" formats.

Pros:

• a convenient way to record a lecture for distance ed students
• some students like them, especially students who don't like reading

Cons:

• encourages one-way education where you talk and students listen - not the ideal model for online courses
• can result in very large file sizes, especially if using PowerPoint's built-in voice annotation tool
• most students dislike them compared to more interactive techniques
• very difficult for non-auditory learners to follow
• must include a full transcript to meet ADA requirements.

If you are interested in using them, as of Fall, 2005, the recommended software is Camtasia Studio (http://www.techsmith.com/), which will record your screen and your voice, compress the file, and produce a web page with a clickable table of contents.