This week's article looks quickly at the dark side of presentation programs like PowerPoint, then goes on to suggest some cures for the common presentation blues.

The PowerPoint Controversy

Edward Tufte of Yale is the grand master emeritus of information design and a curmudgeonly critic of the way teachers and business people use computer presentations. In 2003 his articles sparked a debate that has helped to raise the level of discussion of how best to use the new digital technology for lectures. These brief and pithy volleys in the PowerPoint wars make for interesting reading.

• PowerPoint is Evil, by Edward Tufte, in Wired magazine, . This is the article that started it all. Even better is Tufte's 32-page illustrated booklet on the topic, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, available for purchase in printed form at Tufte's own web site. His metaphor of Josef Stalin and bullet points is entertaining.
• The Great Man Has Spoken. Now What Do I Do? A Response to Edward R. Tufte's "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint", from Communication Insight, Volume 1, Issue 1, October 2003. This useful riposte provides some good concepts and principles for employing the new media in appropriate ways.
• In Defense of PowerPoint, by Don Norman. Norman's response to Tufte's criticism presents the positive side of presentation technology, and reminds us to differentiate personal notes, illustrative slides, and handouts, which are often confused in the typical classroom slide show.

The Power of Positive Presentations

Not all educators agree with Tufte's damning of presentation software. Many have worked to find good ways to employ PowerPoint in the classroom. Here are a few examples.

• Active Learning with PowerPoint, from the University of Minnesota Center for Teaching and Learning Services.
• Hints for giving seminars with PowerPoint, from the Swarthmore College Biology Department.
• Use of PowerPoint in the Classroom, a research study from the Computer Writing and Research Lab at the University of Texas.

The University of Minnesota Center for Teaching and Learning explains the problem:

There are both positive and negative aspects to using PowerPoint in the classroom. First, the positives. PowerPoint is easy for professors to update, saving them time and energy. It's neat and clean, and it allows for "portability" of materials. Professors can take slides from one lecture, update them, include them in another lecture, and share them with colleagues or students. It also provides a platform for incorporating a variety of different kinds of multi-media file-types: images, video, audio, and animations.

There are also drawbacks to using PowerPoint as a teaching tool. PowerPoint, when used incorrectly, can encourage student (and teacher) passivity by discouraging interaction between them. Professors often overload slides with information, forcing them to move through the material too quickly while overwhelming students with details. This can sometimes discourage students and lead them to stop listening to the lecture altogether.

While many teachers would disagree with Edward Tufte's claim that presentation software is inherently evil, we must nonetheless strive to use these new tools in ways that respect our audience and take full advantage of the digital opportunities they offer. By keeping in mind three basic concepts: Idea, Activity, and Simplicity, we can make our presentations at least benign and possibly provocative.

Idea

Lectures are about ideas, not about words. Use slides to provoke and communicate the ideas behind the words you are saying. Don't use slides to mimic your words. Wherever possible, use images to communicate ideas, rather than words. Distill your concepts down to a single picture and a single word -- this works much better in a group presentation environment. Provide details through your narration, not through text on the screen.

Sentences belong in books, not on slides. If you want people to read complete sentences and paragraphs, write a book, or hand them out on paper, or put them on a web page they can look at later. In large-group presentations, use images or single words on the screen to represent your ideas, and speak the sentences with your voice. This is more natural, it keeps the audience paying attention to you, and it avoids squinting. The best presentations aim to use one word per bullet.

Activity
Use slides to get your audience thinking and working.

• Show them two images side by side and ask them to compare.
• Show a photograph and ask a question.
• Present an image that's a non sequitor to surprise them.
• Show a series of images, and ask them to predict what will come next.
• Follow Edward Tufte's advice: "Visual reasoning usually works more effectively when relevant information is shown side by side."

For more ideas on creating active presentations, see Twelve Active Learning Strategies, from the University of Minnesota.

Simplicity
Avoid clutter and complexity. It's easy to place a pretty picture as the background of every slide, or to choose a complex pattern from the slide design menu. But in most cases these add little value, and more often than not serve to make the text of the slide difficult to decipher, and to distract the viewer from your critical images. Choose a plain background, or none at all.

Be merciful. A lecture with 45 slides can be torture to its audience, especially if all the slides show exactly the same style of sets of bulleted text. Vary the style and format of slides. Use images to illustrate your ideas. Let your voice do the talking -- you need not include every word on the slides. Leave a slide up for several minutes as you explain it, and discuss its essential ideas with the class. Let the slides show only the key ideas, represented by images, single words, or short phrases. Consider limiting yourself to one slide for every four minutes of lecture. Parsimony is one of the heavenly virtues.