From: accessed September 26, 2011.
How do I make my PowerPoint slides more effective?
by Mikaela on July 19, 2011
While the debate rages on over the value of PowerPoint in teaching,* we might as well consider how to use it most effectively when we douse it.
Everyone agrees that PowerPoint is almost sure to be used badly if we’re not thoughtful about it.For example, I may want topaste into my slidean entire cladogram of echinoderms or an entire schematic of US governmental structure, but you probably don’t want me to. You probably want me to show you just the amount you can take in at one time, in a font you can read. These are some fundamental principles of PowerPoint usethat are availablein any “Tips and Tricks” list.
But what about for those of us who have figured out the fundamentals? What’s next? One promising way to improve the effectiveness ofPowerPoint presentations when teaching is to use the “assertion-evidence structure” advocated at PennState.This structure calls for a sentence at the top of the slide that makes an assertion, and an image (a photo, a figure, a diagram) underneath that provides visual evidence for the assertion. The goal is to offer a piece of information (the assertion) and help the student remember it by showing a relevant image (the evidence). The folks at PennState point out that traditional use of PowerPoint pushes the presenter to turn every idea into a bulleted list, which often doesn’t match the content or thinking processesof our disciplines. The assertion-evidence structure allows the presenter to representa logical progression of thoughts in a way that the presenter – andother professionals in the field – probablyactually think about the topic. And itmay help students connect the dots in that logical progression.
Theassertion-evidence model isdescribed in more detail here(watch the slide show about smelling by dogs – it’s kind of slow to start) and here. Perhaps even more useful is a few examples of “before and after” slides.
Is the “assertion-evidence” structure useful to you as an instructor? What do you see as its strengths or weaknesses? Do you have ideas for improvement of this model?
* Consider some of the insightful concerns fromthe “Death by PowerPoint” crowd, e.g., Garber 2001,Tufte 2006.
Citations
Garber, A. 2001. Death by PowerPoint. Small Business Computing. Accessed at:
Tufte, E. R. 2006. The cognitive style of PowerPoint: Pitching out corrupts within. 2nd ed. Graphics Press.
Tagged as: assertion-evidence structure, PowerPoint, presenting