10 tips to improve PowerPoints (idea)

Too often, PowerPoints suck, to quote my student. Why yours? For two reasons: 1) you’re not an illustrator and 2) you’re trying to make them a vehicle for content, rather than a framework. This article will give you suggestions for simple changes that will allow you to put good teaching into your slides and get rid of your bad habits.

Your PowerPoints should be a lesson plan based on the principles of good teaching. One of those principles is good scaffolding. When your students come in, give them a summary of the class schedule, such as:

• I. Brief review
• II. A lesson on the Columbian Exchange
• III. Primary sources: 16th century recipes
• IV. Make a prediction: Spices

Usually, when I tell a new class to write this outline on the first day, about half of them do it right away, and the rest just sit there. To those others, I make it clear that I am asking them to do it, not just a hint: “Like I said, you need to write this outline down in your notes, right now.”

Students, like professors, have their own pet ideas about pedagogy; these are often wrong, so students may not immediately see the wisdom of doing as you guide them. Don’t be afraid to shake things up a bit. I often explain, very briefly, the research: Knowing how to organize class time makes it more likely that they will remember things.

At the beginning of each section, I insert a blank slide without the title of that section—for example, “I. Last Week’s Review.” This type of visual posting is a map of where you are leading your students that day, with trail markers to help them follow you.

We all know that the retrieval of the past and its connection with new information is important in learning. Both of those things can be built right into your slides. Rather than going into the day’s topic, ask students to review. Show the slide with the text: “Write down three questions to ask about the last class material.” This can even be a small test. (I call them academic journal entries and number them.)

Now, instead of three students raising their hands, your whole class tries to remember the story. If they don’t write, say to them: “Everyone needs to write three things.” The next step is to ask for volunteers or a quick brainstorming session, which is the method I recommend.

The next slide has nothing but the words “II. A lesson on the Columbian Exchange. ” It’s time for a speech. Apart from the etymological roots of this word (and its multimedia history at the end), you need to avoid reading the slides. By that I mean that you read both again students learning. The easiest way to do this not to put too much text on the slide.

Here’s my rule: “No more than seven words per slide—even better, less than five, and even better, zero.” We’ve seen text-filled slides for decades and just remade them. Several decades of psychology research—and a lot of experience—tell us that these slides look like a learning vehicle.

When you put up a slide with a lot of text, your readers automatically try to read it and decide what is important enough to notice. Perhaps, as soon as the slide is up, you jump in and start reading it, or, worse, comment on it. When you speak, students are now splitting their time reading and listening to you—and at the same time desperately trying to take notes, knowing that you probably have tons of these slides full of text and you’ll probably be rushing to the next one before you have time to notice anything. Don’t fall into the trap of, “I’ll give you these slides later online; there is no need to write this down.” They will ignore you and write anyway.

The concept of cognitive load is important here: Your students only have so much brain power. If they see a wall of text and, at the same time, have to listen to it and try to process both visual and auditory channels, they will retain less.

Instead of forcing them to listen and learn, just ask them to do the first thing. Put a striking visual image that is a synecdoche of your point. Again. Just. Speak up. “But,” he argues, “sometimes I need to write some text!” Yes, of course. I am a historian, and in every lesson I put the following (using the colors you see here):

I return to these sentences over and over again in class, always connecting the story to these 28 words. But when I start putting them on the slide, I don’t speak. I simply let my students read and re-read them. I then ask them to copy the sentences down, and give them time to do so.

And, whenever I put more than seven words on a slide, I say out loud, “I’m going to give you a minute to analyze this.” Give students time to read, process and perhaps take notes. Trust me, it will take some practice to train yourself to just shut down for a minute and not, well, study.

Another thing I did was add a little countdown timer in one corner or the other to remind me to wait while they passed the slide. (See how to do it here.) To return to the metaphor of leading your students on a journey: Every data point on your slides, every term/graph/explanation/whatever, is the rock you put in their backpacks. If you want them to finish walking, ask them to pick up only the stones for you indeed they want to have them at the end of the trip. Others have a dead weight on their mental backs.

10 Specific Recommendations

The lecture part of your class meeting is where you might automatically turn into tons of text or busy images, and that means that’s when you really need to apply some basic image rules to help you make better slides and enlighten your students’ understanding. burden. The main idea: the best slides have little things on them, are visually compelling and are designed to be understood quickly. Feel free to copy the examples from this annotated guide or this example, and follow the guidelines below:

1. Include very little of everything. I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. Use the method, way small print. You can add more by talking. But they also include a few busy photos. Have one good picture, not many small, wrinkled, inappropriate ones.

Also, there is currently no law against the great white border, but there should be. Instead, make your images bleed across the page, with text covered in transparent boxes. (Just copy the slide from my guide or the example above.) When placing a graph or table, show only the bare requirements for labels and data points.

2. It is hidden to create focus or sequence. If you don’t need students to look at parts of what might be a busy image, superimpose a small white rectangle over it, one that is opaque or transparent. (See my guide and example above.) You can also have the same image, say, on four consecutive slides and display their respective parts.
3. Highlight things. The opposite of hiding: Use the drawing tools in PowerPoint to draw large, transparent circles with 12-point yellow borders to point your audience to what’s really important.
4. Use color and size in the text. Let’s say you were comparing the endowment of Harvard, Yale and Princeton University. Instead of using 24-point black font to write the three centers and three values, use red, blue and orange for their names, and scale the point size according to the size of the gift. Students will grasp relative sizes that quickly.
5. Simplify the data. Do you need to explain the difference in the price of a Big Mac in three different countries? Instead of using the actual prices in US dollars—which would be $4.07, $5.89 and $1.42—you round the prices to $4, $6 and $1.50, and put the three prices in ascending order.
6. Use resized images or icons. Just as you can change the font size for emphasis, you can change the size of images or icons to create scale.
7. Use high resolution images. The main sin in such a visual environment is to use vulgar, vulgar images. If you’re using Google, select “Images,” then “Tools,” and under “Size” select “Large.” You will only get the best high resolution images.
8. Keep things in the same place. Every time you put up a slide with a lot of information organized in a certain way, your audience has to process it to make sense. If you are presenting the same type of information, keep everything in the same order, if possible.
9. Use small text. Original: Try to use less than seven words. PowerPoint is visually appealing and complements your voice perfectly. No plug-ins are required. Use small text!
10. Improve collaboration. That said, consider getting the free Poll Everywhere polling software plug-in. A more advanced and adult version of Kahoot! It integrates well with PowerPoint and Google Slides—no need to leave the presentation for a website—and allows you to mix and match with your course.

If the important rule is that you have to wait a second and, um, be quiet, you need to build into your speech more than that time. This brings us to the third part of the class, where you are silent and the students have to find the information and, using the principles you just taught, deal with it. We all want to talk and talk because we have the ability, and we want to put everything together. However, which is better: That they remember 5 percent of what you teach for 90 minutes or 35 percent of what you teach for 45 minutes?

It is time for the students to process the information you have given them. This is where you need to build effective learning into your slides. After the third slide, “Primary sources: 16th century recipes,” I put directions on the slide. In my example I used a method called Jigsaw, but I also highly recommend sharing thoughts. In this third part, I only use a few slides, mostly with instructions or the source they are analyzing.

Finally, let’s examine another sample PowerPoint section: “Make a prediction: Spices.” In his book Little TeachingIn one of my six favorite books on pedagogy, James Lang highlights research on predictions. If you make predictions, even about a topic you know little about, you will learn and remember that content better. At the end of class, ask your students to write down the three to five most important points to get them to passively process what they heard, or ask them to make predictions about things they haven’t learned but will learn. next class. You might start the next class by asking them to check their predictions by reading.

Whatever you do, simplifying your slides, enhancing them with purposefully selected images and embedding in PowerPoint a well-defined structure for your class meetings—including active learning and other moments of processing and applying information—will improve your teaching. . It will also help your PowerPoints to absorb less.