PowerPoint, Handouts, and Edward Tufte
This discussion, instigated by Edward Tufte’s comments, I found fascinating. First, I liked that there was a mix of students and teachers responding. I feel that many teachers (much more at the secondary school level than college) have a great disconnect with their students. Second, I really enjoyed that there were so many disparaging viewpoints. I personally enjoy PowerPoint, am indifferent to handouts (because I usually lose them), and hate when teachers expect their students to be stenographers.
PowerPoint is wonderful because of the ease with which one can use it and transfer it to numerous places. Professors used to have to carry around their spindles of slides; now one slips the flash drive into her pocket and away he goes. However, abuse of PowerPoint is one of the worst possible public speaking sins. That PowerPoint of the Gettysburg Address could not be any worse! The notes make no sense, and even if they did, I cannot imagine that in anyway it added to the presentation.
My own experience with PowerPoint starts when PowerPoint started. I thought it was awesome to watch the bullet points zoom in and screech to a halt, but I soon became disillusioned. As a seventh grader, I was getting to do PowerPoint slides for my mother’s college class. She, thankfully for her students, vetoed many of my more adolescent, style wishes of zooming text and loud explosions. There is no doubt in my mind though that the PowerPoint notes were much better than her scrawled overheads. I feel my own use of PowerPoint has stemmed from being well-trained early on about the abuses and I have survived relatively unscathed by the potential downfalls of technological presentations.
Although I was more interested in the PowerPoint discussion, I thought that the people who debated handout issues had many good points. The one professor said that he only handed out notes at the end of class. I think that is a jerk move if he wanted people to just take notes for the hell of it, but I can understand why he would do that if he taught at a school like Penn State where half the students would only stay until they got the handouts or took the quiz and then got up and left. I think teachers, especially of large undergraduate lectures, who give handouts make it easier for students to pay attention and to discuss things at a later date. Depending on the subject, to have a handout that has all the names and places spelled correctly is a great blessing. If I am ever put into the situation where I have a large class and a lot of names that I will be dropping during a lecture, I will definitely give a handout of terms/important people at the very least.
February 28th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
Hmmm, I think I might disagree with you on the handouts. I think especially in large lecture courses nobody pays attention at all and so one way (not necessarily a good way though) is to make them take notes. I agree that taking notes frantically all class period does not help students engage very thoughtfully in class, but if it’s a choice between that and paying no attention at all, I think I would go with taking notes, maybe just not at such a frantic pace.