Effective Power Point Slides
I have found that by sharing my Power Point slides with some students who are having a hard time understanding or learning new material acts like a"scaffold" for them to learn better!
Power Point Slides are a good tool to use in class. Students enjoy the visual learning and some students prefer to receive information visual.
Ernest,
Your strategy is right on with the break points. Learners need these break points to internalize the content they have just covered as well being able to see relevancy to it. This method helps them to see the ROI of the course.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Power Point presentations can be very effective teaching/learning tools. One must however be cognisant of the numberof slides and amount of material that the student's are "sitting through" both on a daily and weekly basis.
I teach a three hour Pharmacology course that meets four days in a row and is very content intensive. I find that I have to break presentations(with or without animations, etc) into manageable segments or "sensory/information overload" occurs - both for the students and myself- I call it becoming "brain dead". Even a cumulative "slide overload" can occur during the course of week.
One of the things that I try to do in breaking the presentations down to manageable segments is to use "break points" at strategic places in my presentation in order to "compartmentalize" and differentiate various types of information in the student's minds.
For instance, "We just finished up ____. Lets take 10 minutes now so you and I can 'air our heads out'. When we start up again you'll find out about ____ and how/why ____ "
Not only does the "break" help students and instructor, but the students will usually see (and appreciate) the instructor as one who cares about them... an added bonus.
I agree that Power Point is a ddditional instructional support and not all out of a book
Laura,
I agree about using an outline of the PP slides as a study guide. I do not post in advance my slides because of the reasons you cite. I want them to follow along as we talk about the content so I can respond to their questions and reinforce the material will examples. I found that with the advance copies they often did not attend class or were not engaged.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
We tend to hand out powerpoint notes pages prior to the lecture so that the students can follow along.....in my previous job, at a university, we were expected to post the power points the day before so that the students could print and bring to class. Getting them the day before was a good and a bad thing, in my opinion. For those that used them as a proper scaffolding device, they would read what they were supposed to and then come to lecture and by listening to my experiences and participation, learn the material. Conversely, there were those that relied too much on these outlines of information and thought that this would be a good study strategy without paying attention in class or reading.....their grades definitely showed the difference...
students learn by doing with the graphical content used to retain even more knowledge when learning
Denise,
Good idea. I like this approach.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Yes it is. Most powerpoints get to the meat of the subject without all of the fluff. My team has also incorporated handouts into the "book" powerpoints to enhance them and also as a going green effort.
I agree, Powerpoint slides are an excellent tool to use in the classroom. It also helps them with sticking to the main points of the lecture because it more like a broken down version of the book. I think it also helps them take notes more effectively, by not writing down so much information and by being able to filter out the most important from the least important.
Power point and hands on is how I lecture. I find that the students can easily follow along when you use the power point.
Daniel,
This is a great way to provide additional instructional support to students. The more they can graphically see the content the more of it they will retain.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
