The PowerPoint Girl

Blogging, and PowerPoint

2011-11-11T09:03:00.000-08:00

I've been neglecting my blog. Not on purpose, but because I really don't understand blogging as a concept, especially micro blogging. I have a Twitter account, but have no idea how to use it. But its been brought to my attention by (if I knew anything about tagging, I'd be able to insert his twitter ID here...) a new colleague Ahmet, that there is now a facility to automatically tweet points from a PowerPoint presentation as it is given (see here for instructions).

Right, my reaction to this was initially... why on earth would anyone want to do that? I guess the logic is that people presenting at conferences or business meetings or whatever can get feedback on what they are saying from their audience but also from people who aren't even in the room. Which is great stuff if this can be applied in lecture settings, the lecture can be an interactive event in which students can raise questions without fear of having to actually speak in public, or after the lecture they can find relavent resources online to direct each other to, and a bunch of other really useful and constructive stuff which might help their learning.

But surely this relies on the stuff being presented being in a format that is independently uderstandable; what is said on the PowerPoint needs to be intelligible for people who have no idea of the surrounding information, to understand it when they read it on Twitter outside of the context of the presentation. Therefore, the PowerPoint presentation will have to carry a lot of substantive information in a text format.... the dreaded Bulletpoint! The issue is that the people who are receiving the presentation live will have to be reading the PowerPoint slides as well as listening to the presenter speak. What is the point in that I wonder?

My research is investigating the way that lecturers integrate their visual presentations into their speech in this way. Analysis is still ongoing, but an emerging observation from student data is that students do not like to read and hear the same things. They want to hear something new. Once they have read it on the PowerPoint, they don't want to then be told the exact same thing, whether the lecturer uses the same words or not. This relationship also goes in the opposite direction, they don't want to hear it and then read it, otherwise its boring.

To avoid boring students (and indeed any audience) to death, PowerPoints should be saying something different to what the presenter says, or better still from the cognitive load/multiple representation/ multimodality perspective, not say anything at all, rather, show things ( think pictures, diagrams etc). And yeah I know that you can put pictures and things on Twitter, which is great for the people who are at the presentation, they can tweet their interpretations of the picture/ graph/ data table or whatever. What about the people who weren't there though? They'll be getting a load of context-less visual stuff which can be interpreted in a hundred different ways, potentially not in the way that the presenter meant.

So what exactly is the point of tweeting presentations? Have I read the situation entirely wrong? Maybe I should try again with Twitter...

Reflections on SRHE 2009

2009-12-14T07:10:00.000-08:00

Had to write a report on the SRHE conference for my funders, the School of Education. It goes as follows.....

Not only was SRHE my first conference, it was also the first time I would present a paper. This made me more than a little bit nervous about what to expect. Luckily, I was accompanied by both Andy Coverdale from the School of Education and Odessa Dariel from the School of Nursing at UoN who were in a similar position and helped me feel more relaxed. Also, the conference location, Celtic Manor in Newport, South Wales, provided a great night’s sleep to set me up for the conference on Monday morning.

The conference kicked off with a talk given by Dr Catherine Manathunga, Senior Lecturer in Higher Education at the Teaching and Educational Development Institute and the UQ Graduate School. Dr Manathunga presented the delegates with several challenges to be addressed by researchers in HE, including addressing the underrepresentation of women amongst the leaders of HE research and consolidating HE as a research area in its own right.

After this rousing speech came the first session of presentations. I attended the session on working in HE which provided interesting insights into the current issues in academic employment, such as short term contracts and their impact on staff.

After lunch and a very informative session on “How to get Published” by two editors of HE journals, came my paper presentation session. The atmosphere was relaxed, so my initial nerves almost completely disappeared. My presentation went better than I expected and the discussion afterwards was very lively. It gave me the opportunity to talk to some lecturers about how (and if) the implications of my work would affect their own teaching practice. It was useful to hear some of the more practical issues lecturers face when planning their lectures.

Another break (and more food!) was followed by a symposium by Andy and Odessa on their research into Student Voice, this also went really well and provided a great discussion between the attendees.

Overall, it was a very long day, but a fulfilling and informative day. It has built my confidence to present again so I will now be on the lookout for any future opportunities.

Data collection....already!

2009-11-02T08:32:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling very motivated today. I'm now only 4 weeks into my PhD and I'm already collecting data! Well, strictly speaking its not just for me, its a sort of mini project with my supervisor, Dr Charles Crook. We're collecting video recordings of lectures on a specific topic to assess what is currently done in that topic in terms of presentations, how the narrative is synchronised with the visual display(s) and so on. We're hoping this will give an insight into how the "standard lecture" for this topic (if there is a standard) is presented (but not what is covered, we're not looking at content).

So, if you know of any Psychology lecturers in the UK who teach attachment (its "basic" undergraduate psychology which we assume is taught everywhere) who are generally happy to help with such things, let me know! Otherwise, will keep updated with outcomes.

Breaking the PowerPoint Habit

2009-10-15T05:53:00.000-07:00

I'll begin this blog with exciting news... I am to present my first paper at the SRHE postgraduate and newer researchers conference.

My MA dissertation threw up some key messages from students about the usage of presentational technologies during HE lectures, mainly that they are massively overused and misused. In the words of Voss (2004) "If you are not adding any additional information to your slide show, then why not just e-mail it to me and I’ll go to another session?". There were reports of lecturers reading verbatim the text on the screen, talking too fast, cramming too much text onto each slide, using unnecessary animations. None of these complaints are new, we've all heard the phrase "death by PowerPoint" and have all experienced at least one presentation, whether in academia or in business, that has drained our will to live.

Moreover, the use of PowerPoint does not seem to fit with a constructivist model of education. The main function of PowerPoint is to transmit information from the lecturer to the learner rather than to encourage the active construction of an understanding.

So.... why does it continue to permeate all aspects of a HE education?

I'll be exploring this in more detail in the paper, although I will again point out that what I have to say is nothing new. But what I hope to do is to add to conversations on changing and adapting the use of PowerPoint to fit with constructivist ideals, making presentations cognitively challenging and possibly encouraging deeper learning approaches in students.

This will be my first conference paper, I will be nervous, but I hope it will encourage a good discussion. The main problem is, how do I do it without misusing PowerPoint?!