PowerPoint Bad For Learning?

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A new study suggests that it is more difficult to process information if it is coming at you in the written and spoken form at the same time. The same researchers also believe that teachers should just give students answers, instead of making them solve problems on their own.

"It is effective to speak to a diagram, because it presents information in a different form. But it is not effective to speak the same words that are written, because it is putting too much load on the mind and decreases your ability to understand what is being presented."
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Duh. PowerPoint is abused and misused. People tend to put exactly what they're going to say into the slides. Unfortunately, it isn't just students. Even professionals do it. The stock templates and examples suck. PowerPoint...sucks.
 
These researchers needs a better hobby or something.


Give kids answers rather than make them do some critical and logical thinking? Wow. I would hate to raise a child like that who gets everything without having to work for it.
 
I hate powerpoint for anything but very quick presentations; using it for studies, demonstrations, courses, guides etc is simply ineffective and very amateurish;
 
Everyone thinks powerpoint is the messiah of applications. They use it for everything. Its a slide show program...that's it! Its not a printing template...its not a multimedia powerhouse...use it for what its designed for....SLIDE SHOWS!
 
I apologize for not reading the article. But I would like to chime in on the Power Point thing. I remember it being pushed a lot in College, and the professors seemed to really rely on it. So much so that there was a couple slides fundamentally wrong about MS Exchange in class and I had to point it out.

I personally think there is a danger of using Power Point as "crutch", and most people read their slides, rather than using it as a guideline for the presentation. I think it can be used as a great way to incorporate graphics, graphs, and other visual aids to a presentation. But students are often expected to have it be the presentation.
 
Ockie said:
These researchers needs a better hobby or something.


Give kids answers rather than make them do some critical and logical thinking? Wow. I would hate to raise a child like that who gets everything without having to work for it.
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Like Paris Hilton. She didn't even know what a paycheck was. Yes, I admit, I watched a few episodes of Simple Life's first season.

"Here's your week of pay."
"What is this piece of paper?"
"Your paycheck."
"Okay...that's hot... What do we do with it?"

Nothing like feeding kids answers without making them apply their knowledge. You could tell them anything. Some comedian awhile ago had a good joke about it. Something like giving them stupid answers, like telling elementary kids "Two plus two equals...chair!" They would never know.
 
Ockie said:
Give kids answers rather than make them do some critical and logical thinking? Wow. I would hate to raise a child like that who gets everything without having to work for it.
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I can easily see how this research would work in practice. It's not that you're just giving them the answer and expecting them to do no critical and logical thinking. It's that demonstration and analysis from start to completion makes it simpler for one to pick up new information and reapply it later. It is how we begin learning, yet somewhere along the line that teaching method gets messed up and confused with the "you should be able to figure this out" method.

I propose this as an example: when students are first being taught to count, they are told the numbers that exist, and given the numbers' order. More than that, they are told a set of rules that govern operators such as + or -. To exemplify these rules and theories, completed examples are given, such as 1 + 1 = 2, or 4 - 1 = 3. These things are told to the students as the answer, and from there the students can begin to piece together alternative methods, reasons, and ultimately, the critical and logical thinking you advocate.

This extends to an even higher level. Pointing to my own experience, in my recent circuit analysis class, it was very difficult for me to pick up certain circuit designs due to the method of teaching. This method taught us the properties of a BJT, but only solved a trivial example from start to finish, and never made clear other considerations, possible topologies, et cetera. However, the problems presented had such, and it was a struggle fraught with many dead ends that I had to spend time processing. The end result was that, sometimes, I would find myself moving down one of the same dead end paths again simply because my brain had trained itself that way sans an outside guiding force to help get it right the first time. Later, when given a proper set of answered problems, analysis of arbitrary circuits was much easier (first book was Jager and Blalock's "Microelectronic Circuit Design", second was Gopalan's "Digital Microelectronic Circuits").

Hence, it's not killing the process of learning, but instead, focusing on emphasizing the proper path to a solution. Given that the other part of the research (as I read in TFA) suggests we don't pick up new ideas when our brains are overloaded, it makes even more sense that, when struggling just to figure out "what's next", we find it harder to absorb new information to use in a logical or critical fashion.
 
Tawnos said:
I can easily see how this research would work in practice. It's not that you're just giving them the answer and expecting them to do no critical and logical thinking. It's that demonstration and analysis from start to completion makes it simpler for one to pick up new information and reapply it later. It is how we begin learning, yet somewhere along the line that teaching method gets messed up and confused with the "you should be able to figure this out" method.

I propose this as an example: when students are first being taught to count, they are told the numbers that exist, and given the numbers' order. More than that, they are told a set of rules that govern operators such as + or -. To exemplify these rules and theories, completed examples are given, such as 1 + 1 = 2, or 4 - 1 = 3. These things are told to the students as the answer, and from there the students can begin to piece together alternative methods, reasons, and ultimately, the critical and logical thinking you advocate.

This extends to an even higher level. Pointing to my own experience, in my recent circuit analysis class, it was very difficult for me to pick up certain circuit designs due to the method of teaching. This method taught us the properties of a BJT, but only solved a trivial example from start to finish, and never made clear other considerations, possible topologies, et cetera. However, the problems presented had such, and it was a struggle fraught with many dead ends that I had to spend time processing. The end result was that, sometimes, I would find myself moving down one of the same dead end paths again simply because my brain had trained itself that way sans an outside guiding force to help get it right the first time. Later, when given a proper set of answered problems, analysis of arbitrary circuits was much easier (first book was Jager and Blalock's "Microelectronic Circuit Design", second was Gopalan's "Digital Microelectronic Circuits").

Hence, it's not killing the process of learning, but instead, focusing on emphasizing the proper path to a solution. Given that the other part of the research (as I read in TFA) suggests we don't pick up new ideas when our brains are overloaded, it makes even more sense that, when struggling just to figure out "what's next", we find it harder to absorb new information to use in a logical or critical fashion.
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I FUCKING HATE WHEN EVERYTHING FROM LECTURE AND THE BOOK IS BULLSHIT EXAMPLES AND THE HOMEWORK PROBLEMS ARE A GIANT PAIN IN THE ASS.
 
I agree, tawnos, and I'm in almost the exact same situation in a circuits class :p

I think people are misunderstanding when they say to "just give them the answers". I think what they mean is to go through examples from start to finish, including answers.
 
Martyr said:
I FUCKING HATE WHEN EVERYTHING FROM LECTURE AND THE BOOK IS BULLSHIT EXAMPLES AND THE HOMEWORK PROBLEMS ARE A GIANT PAIN IN THE ASS.
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See, if they gave decent examples, this person would not feel the need to make the voice in my head that reads posts yell at me. >.<
 
Most people are primarily visual thinkers. Others learn best by hearing, reading, or doing. Although a combination of these will always be best to master a topic, how likely is it that we can absorb two of the above types of information at the exact same time?

When I was getting trained as an instructor, the instructor-trainer insisted that if a student asked for you to repeat a statement, they were better auditory learners. I countered that if they were hearing-focused, they would have gotten it the first time: Turn around and draw a diagram for them. Be sure to label it for the 'readers'.

PowerPoints are great for the visual part of a presentation, especially for its animation ability (no, not flying bullet points), since this can be hard to draw quickly. In practice, I always found that the time spent to create a great PPT diagram was completely wasted, as I had to illustrate concepts on the fly in a live setting.
 
While serving in the Army back in the 80's & 90's, I attended a few presentations that used slides and the attending Generals would often stop the presentation and berate the presenter if he or she read off the slides. One General literally said, "Do you think I'm fucking blind? Do you think I can't read? Read one more of those slides to me and you're outta here!"

Its amazing how many people still read off the slides and most audiences (especially CEO's etc.) either don't notice or care.

So really, PowerPoint doesn't suck, people suck.
 
Tawnos said:
I can easily see how this research would work in practice. It's not that you're just giving them the answer and expecting them to do no critical and logical thinking. It's that demonstration and analysis from start to completion makes it simpler for one to pick up new information and reapply it later. It is how we begin learning, yet somewhere along the line that teaching method gets messed up and confused with the "you should be able to figure this out" method.

I propose this as an example: when students are first being taught to count, they are told the numbers that exist, and given the numbers' order. More than that, they are told a set of rules that govern operators such as + or -. To exemplify these rules and theories, completed examples are given, such as 1 + 1 = 2, or 4 - 1 = 3. These things are told to the students as the answer, and from there the students can begin to piece together alternative methods, reasons, and ultimately, the critical and logical thinking you advocate.

This extends to an even higher level. Pointing to my own experience, in my recent circuit analysis class, it was very difficult for me to pick up certain circuit designs due to the method of teaching. This method taught us the properties of a BJT, but only solved a trivial example from start to finish, and never made clear other considerations, possible topologies, et cetera. However, the problems presented had such, and it was a struggle fraught with many dead ends that I had to spend time processing. The end result was that, sometimes, I would find myself moving down one of the same dead end paths again simply because my brain had trained itself that way sans an outside guiding force to help get it right the first time. Later, when given a proper set of answered problems, analysis of arbitrary circuits was much easier (first book was Jager and Blalock's "Microelectronic Circuit Design", second was Gopalan's "Digital Microelectronic Circuits").

Hence, it's not killing the process of learning, but instead, focusing on emphasizing the proper path to a solution. Given that the other part of the research (as I read in TFA) suggests we don't pick up new ideas when our brains are overloaded, it makes even more sense that, when struggling just to figure out "what's next", we find it harder to absorb new information to use in a logical or critical fashion.
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What you are suggesting is a example rather than providing the answers. You are providing an example to extrapolate your own data from.

I agree with your view of interpretation as everything is an example, such as driving class for your drivers license, or an instructor sitting with you showing you how to do it, in that reasoning I can agree. I work best myself from an example, I find that I work much more accurately and effectively, however, I won't learn anything if the answer was just provided for the same problem I'm trying to solve.

What I was talking about is giving all the announcers whenever you want them, not need them... which is not the correct way to learn as it fuels nothing.
 
Wow, this is an interesting "no shit" article, with a bit of "are you fucking kidding me"

Being a teacher myself, mind you a specialized one i.e. teach a particular subject matter at the college level, I can say I don't think I would ever do powerpoint. I teach physics, and while I would do some nifty 3d/animation stuff I wouldn't have lectures on powerpoint. The learning process from a lecture comes in multiple forms, first you hear the teacher say it, then you see them write it down on the board, then the student takes notes (hopefully) and they commit it to memory because they need to know what they're writing. Power points tend to pull one particular piece out, not to mention teaches tend to go much faster when it's flashed up, and if a student is too slow? WHoops sorry they can't see what they missed that's still on the board, because you skipped it and went to a new slide.

Now giving answers is better? Bulllllllllshiiiiiiiit. While I do assign a fair number of "even" questions with the answer in the back of the book I find that they often do some outlandish shit to find equations and what not to get to the correct answer, one student added the number of degrees of the inclined plane to the force that was acting on it, multiplied by the coefficient of friction and came up with a value that was close to the answer in the back... oy vey.. now I know as a teacher I need to take responsibility if they aren't getting it, but at this point it's out of my court!
 
I've had college professors use PowerPoint, and even when they tried to use it correctly, the presentations were horribly boring. Biology, engineering, you name it. It isn't entirely PowerPoint's fault. It's simply boring (and usually tacky) medium.
 
GJSNeptune said:
Duh. PowerPoint is abused and misused. People tend to put exactly what they're going to say into the slides. Unfortunately, it isn't just students. Even professionals do it. The stock templates and examples suck. PowerPoint...sucks.
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yup

It's a tool and can do more harm if used incorrectly. It's not so much powerpoint, but a lazy teacher/professor.
 
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