Anecdotally, there are PowerPoint haters here too.
I use lots of projection of movies, figures, sounds, urls, etc.
in lectures. They are located on a class web site and I leave
the items there for students to use later to complete notes.
But I have chosen not to use PowerPoint because of the negative
comments about PP-lectures from several students. The chief
complaints I have heard center around the use of slides that
consist of 1-level bulleted lists, with some irrelevant graphic
embroidery. The similarity of these slides within and across
classes makes it difficult to attend to content information
according to my informants.
A second difference I have observed as a member of an audience
in a PP presentation is that it is often difficult for some
presenters to alter the sequence of presentation in response to
questions or comments. In those circumstances, this lack of
flexibility makes the technique inferior to overheads.
Ken
On Tue, 20 Mar 2001 14:00:21 -0500 "Michael J. Kane"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> At 11:33 AM 3/20/01 -0600, Stephen W Tuholski wrote:
> >(snip)
> >Last year I decided to use Power Point for all of my lectures. One of the
> >perceived benefits was that I could upload the power point presentations
> >on my web page, allowing students to download them before class. I
> >reasoned that students could use these downloads to follow along while
> >taking additional notes. This sounded really nice, and I thought that if
> >anything, grades would go up. Amazingly, grades seem to have dropped
> >since I started putting the power points on-line. My explanation is that
> >students simply download and study my notes, but they are paying LESS
> >attention to me in class. Has anyone else had this happen to them? If
> >this is the problem, do you suggest NOT putting the notes on-line? I am
> >hesitant to do that, because the better students really like having them
> >in advance, and they are using them the way I intended.
>
> Steve, I've heard this complaint, independently, from a number of
> colleagues using PowerPoint
> notes in their undergraduate classes. I wonder whether you might consider
> making your overheads
> more spare. I post outlines of my lecture notes on the web, and students
> print them out to use
> for note-taking purposes. However, these outlines are truly outlines,
> intended only to help students
> see/use the organization of my lectures. To get the content, they need to
> be in class to fill it in.
>
> In any case, if this problem is as widespread as my personal experiences
> are indicating of late,
> someone needs to do a study on it.
>
> -Mike
>
>
> ************************************************
> Michael J. Kane
> Department of Psychology
> P.O. Box 26164
> University of North Carolina at Greensboro
> Greensboro, NC 27402-6164
> email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> phone: 336-256-1022
> fax: 336-334-5066
>
----------------------
Kenneth M. Steele [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Dept. of Psychology
Appalachian State University
Boone, NC 28608
USA
