Slide presentations, seriously

ABSTRACTThis article addresses the informative quality of slide presentations in university lectures. The arguments also apply to slide presentations in other situations. The article presents a number of principles to improve the graphic quality and use of slide presentations. These principles build on a review of relevant literature and on the author's experience and reflection. Research in this area is limited in quantity and depth.KEYWORDSlearning style, bimodal teaching format, multimedia learning, slide presentation, PowerPoint, progressive disclosureINTRODUCTIONSlide presentations play a major role in teaching and learning at universities. Two conflicting facts characterize the widespread use of slide presenta- tions. They are preferred by lecturers and criticized by students. In prin- ciple, two factors can account for this problem. One is the nature of slide presentations. The other is the skill of the presenter. This article begins by considering slide presentations as a format for teaching and learning. Then, it focuses on the quality of slide presentations and how to make them effective.This article includes references to previous authors on slide presentations. Richard E. Mayer, Professor of Psychology at Univer- sity of California, Santa Barbara, describes nine theory-based multimedia effects, some of which are cited. Most of the other cited authors reflect on their own experiences as slide presenters. Some have a distinguished academic background and address slide presentations as an interesting subsidiary aspect of academic life. Among them are Stephen M. Kosslyn, Professor of Psychology at Harvard, Robert A. H. Anholt, Professor of Zoology and Genetics at North Carolina State University, and Edward R. Tufte, Profes- sor Emeritus of Political Science, Statistics, and Computer Science at Yale University. I also draw on my own prior publication, a manual written for the International Institute for Information Design (Mollerup, 2011). This article also offers prescription based on my extensive professional experience before taking on my professorial position: four decades as editor of design magazines and managing director of a professional design practice, as well as frequent lecturing.This article does not argue for slide presenta- tions in higher education or elsewhere. Slide presentations are already an overwhelming aspect of contemporary life. The sheer ubiquity of slide pre- sentations means that their well-known weaknesses warrant a closer look. According to UNESCO (2013, np) there are now more than 17,000 universi- ties in the world. It is a modest guess that each of these universities offers 1,000 slide presentations to an average of 25 students every day. At this rate, at least 425 million students attend 17 million slide presentations every day. To this estimate we can add slide presentations outside academic life. These numbers are modest compared with Web use, but they are still huge.To position slide presentations among other teaching methods, this article starts by discussing learning from lectures compared with learning from books. It continues by discussing two hybrid forms of teaching that address both hearing and seeing: slide presentations and seminars with handouts. The discussion of slide presentations vis-a-vis other teaching methods delineates the arena where slide presentations should prove their worth. The article continues by describing the basics of slide presentations before dealing with lists, details, and handouts. Some of the cited statements are contradictory, possibly because they have their origins in different didactic situations. One example of this concerns reading aloud from text on the screen. Authors are divided whether this is a good idea. Personally, I do and I don't read text aloud from the screen. It depends on the situation. After all, there is a subjective element in any personal presentation.Skilled slide presenters sometimes draw on their expertise to deviate from the principles in this article. …