In an article in yesterday's Irish Times, Ferdinand Von Prondzynski calls for lecturers to adopt "Naked Teaching". Don't get too excited, he means ditching powerpoint slides.
"The standard approach – 36 slides spelling out all the key points, with the presentation printed out for everyone in the room – increasingly represents bad practice, as it may actually inhibit the intellectual connection between the presenter, the topic and the audience, creating an automated process of very little value."
5 comments:
"Teaching unplugged" might be a better name. Only 36 slides? I can think of a colleague who usually has well more than a 100...
Ahem. Cough. Ahem. http://www.stephenkinsella.net/2010/04/02/sans-slideware/
Just don't think it matters that much Steve. Powerpoint or fancy ones or none at all. The main thing is being prepared and being enthusiastic. The slides shouldn't matter too much either way.
I don't agree. Bad slides can certainly be a disaster. Being prepared and enthusiastic is certainly required but I don't think it is sufficient.
Agreed Kevin - but I think the debate is really about whether to have slides or not. I agree that introducing distracting, badly prepared slides that nobody can read or that distract from what the person is saying is universally a no-no. One compromise that a lot of people are coming to (and I think Steve is in this camp) is to give the audience a handout and then lecture without bullet points at all and maybe introduce some graphics where they are needed. I really can't say I would feel deprived if I went to a talk or lecture where the person just ommitted all the slides that say things like "outline of my talk", "previous literature" and so on, and instead just talked about this and gave me a copy of the paper. Having said that, I do this myself and I'm not sure it really is the making or breaking of a talk either way. I think the key thing (and I think Steve would agree) is that we have to get to a place where the technology itself is not what the audience are focusing on. I can think of few occasions where I would care one way or the other whether the speaker used bullet points or not. I would like to see the person's main results clearly presented if it is a talk and ideally to have a copy of the paper in advance but to be honest I really don't care at all if the person decides not to have 10 intro slides nor does it particularly harm me if they do.
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