Some good reasons to use PowerPoint
So why should you consider using PowerPoint for your teaching and learning activities? There are many reasons but the key ones include:
Appropriate use of PowerPoint can enhance the teaching and learning experience for both staff and students
It provides encouragement and support to staff by facilitating the structuring of a presentation in a professional manner. The templates provided have been designed to default to good presentation criteria such as the number of lines of information per slide and appropriate font sizes and types, etc: using the styles of the default templates can significantly improve the clarity and structuring of a presentation. This helps to avoid the common use of excessive text often found on overhead transparencies.
By careful mixing of media, a presentation can appeal to a number of different learning styles and be made more stimulating. You are encouraged to incorporate more sophisticated visual and auditory media into presentations although care is required because of the inevitable increase in file sizes and the danger of excessive use. Incorporation can be done, either directly from within the programme or, sometimes more successfully, by appropriate pausing of the PowerPoint presentation and using alternative technology (e.g. tape player or VCR). Note that this does not require switching off either the computer system or the projector system, one of the most common perceptions that restrict use — instead, use the ‘B’ character toggle switch during a slide presentation to ‘blank’ the screen temporarily while using other media.
The electronic file format allows distribution and modification for/by students unable to be present or who have impaired visual or auditory difficulties. PowerPoint comes with a free viewer programme that can be distributed with the files so that the reader is not required to have PowerPoint on their personal system. However, if they do have it, they are able to perform a greater variety of manipulations on the PowerPoint file provided, such as editing the text, etc before printing it out. Most Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) are now capable of including PowerPoint presentations if required.
Editing of each PowerPoint file is very easy with minimal associated reprinting costs. This ease and potential immediacy of revision facilitates reflection upon, and evolution of, teaching materials by staff whilst minimising the consequences of any revision in terms of either workload or time. This was a major reason for my own extensive switch of teaching materials to PowerPoint, even when the end-product was required to be an overhead projection slide. I also find that I can add a new slide whilst in a lecture if so required: I often use this method to present notices or create a record of the outcome when collecting information from the class so that it can subsequently be made available to the entire class.
The printing of handouts in a variety of formats is facilitated with a number of embedded options to print either the slides themselves (useful if there are graphics involved) or the text from the slides (outlines). The outlines may be saved as .rtf format and opened for further modification within an appropriate word processor. This allows the easy development of more sophisticated handouts based on the PowerPoint presentation but with extra interactive elements such as readings and questions added where appropriate.
Extra information can be ‘hidden’ within files for answering predicted questions or for providing feedback to students using the file in a distance-learning context. The use of speakers notes as an automated feedback system was described by Mottley (2003) who also describes other ways to use PowerPoint for development of self-study materials
The portability of the files, especially on compact disks (CDs) with their large capacity, allows presentations to be given wherever the technology is available or distributed where appropriate. Presentations can also be set up to run automatically if required e.g. as demonstrations/instructions within a laboratory
