KVCC Faculty Orientation Manual Online
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The Use and Misuse of PowerPoint

Of all the emerging technologies in the classroom there is none that rivals the use of PowerPoint in terms of widespread use. Many textbooks come with prepared PowerPoint presentations on the course material and one would be hard pressed to go to a meeting or conference and not see a slide show of some kind. The use of PowerPoint in the classroom has been the subject of analysis by various researchers in education and the results are compelling.

It is important to recognize that a slide show, though it helps organize material in a logical and concise manner, also reduces information and thus may simplify the content to a point that interferes with learning. I'll use an example:

Many people now own digital cameras. One of the factors that we consider when we are purchasing a digital camera is the number of "megapixels" that the camera has. Megapixels refers to the potential resolution of the image when you take a picture. A high megapixel camera takes in a LOT of information and the resulting image contains more detail, it can be enlarged to a bigger size, and the colors are usually better. A low megapixel camera does not take in as much information and thus the images lose detail, etc. etc.

If you were to choose a camera to take a picture and had the choice between a high or low resolution camera you would want to consider your subject and the purpose of taking the picture. If you wanted to catch your child playing in the sandbox a low resolution image would be fine, but if you wanted to capture the find detail of the Mona Lisa for analysis of the artwork of Da Vinci, you may want a higher resolution image.

PowerPoint is a low resolution camera! It is as simple as that. It is meant to provide basic outlines of information in bullet points without a whole lot of detail. PowerPoint is an excellent tool in the art of persuasion. When you are persuading someone of your viewpoint you want to focus their attention on specific clear points with as much power associated with each of these points (did you think that Microsoft just made up the name of their program?)

Instruction is different...we are often not in the position to convince our students but to educate them. We want the fine detail and we don't want to break down the information into basic components. In these instances PowerPoint has been demonstrated as being detrimental to learning. It has been implicated in poor decision making due to the loss of detail and important information in the effort to be concise.

So what are your options? Well, detailed handouts are useful. The scientific community uses "White Papers" to provide briefs with sufficient data so that there is no loss of information. The bottom line is that complex information, if it needs to be processed, must be presented in it's complex form if we are going to expect our students to learn.

If you are experiencing a sort of "black and white" thinking in your students...if they seem to be narrow in their approaches to problem solving...or if they have a tendency to read into or add too much information to a problem they are trying to solve...the culprit may actually be the use of PowerPoint.

For a comprehensive discussion on this topic please refer to Edward Tufte's "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint". Be prepared to be challenged! (This very short book is available at the KVCC library)