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Pedagogical Uses of Presentation Software

Last updated: 07 April 2009
Published in: Finding and using digital media
Tags: e-learning | teaching

Summary

This advice document investigates some pedagogical aspects to consider when using presentation software for teaching and learning.

Introduction

Pedagogy is a term often used in education and which the JISC broadly define as ‘designing for learning’ and ‘understanding my learning’. It is within this context that we address how materials, using digital media objects, can be designed and used in various scenarios and what impact each will have.

Presentation software, as its name suggests was originally conceived as a means to present information to other people - often seller to buyer, to communicate a few choice points. Such software can be quite versatile and so has grown from this use to become a multi-purpose tool used to deliver educational content.

In education, presentation software is frequently used during lectures, demonstrations, online for self-directed study and to produce handouts as course material. Typically, it is the teacher who creates the presentation material to be delivered to learners. As passive recipients the extent of learners’ engagement is to write notes or ask a question.

Such passiveness is a common criticism of using presentation software and is therefore not conducive to the best possible teaching or learning experience. We will make some suggestions which will hopefully enrich the learning experience.
Some of the most widely used presentation software includes Microsoft PowerPoint, Apple Keynote for Mac and OpenOffice Impress.

Establishing a workflow

Using a consistent approach to producing your material will help you to establish a workflow. Your institution/department may already have thought about these issues and may provide templates. The exact steps to follow will vary depending on your experience of using presentation software and the complexity of the outcome that you wish to achieve but steps may include:

Identifying the key areas to cover and working back from there
Using ‘master slides’ these are a special type of slide which acts as style templates (for branding etc.)
Using a design grid for consistent positioning and sizing of elements (text, graphs, images etc.)
Adapting default ‘out-of-the-box’ visual styles or using in-house styles as your institution/department dictates
Sourcing appropriate images, audio and video
Dealing with the copyright of materials you intend to use
Designing for a range of delivery formats (presentation, online, paper-based)
Using the ‘notes’ feature to provide optional greater depth for students and to provide a script should you later wish to record the session

Uses of presentation software

“...in today’s education they have moved beyond the mere imparting of facts to the facilitating of the higher-order skills of creativity, problem-solving, analysis and evaluation.”

“e-Learning Concepts and Practice”, Holmes and Garner, 2006

As mentioned in the introduction, presentation software is now used for a variety of tasks beyond simple presentations by teaching staff and students. An understanding of the context in which your material will be used is necessary to deliver the most suitable format and content.

Delivering face-to-face

By far the most popular use of presentation software is for the delivery of face-to-face teaching in classroom/lecture environments.

The traditional setup for the lecture/classroom environment is teacher-centred rather than learner-centred. The teaching staff run through a linear sequence of material with little opportunity for interaction from both parties. It can be argued that the focus should instead be on the learner. This mode of delivery can be improved upon with some forward planning.

To help enrich the experience consider making the material available in advance of your session to give learners the option of gaining advance comprehension of the session.

This may be in the form of outline slides that do not reveal the full extent of the lecture but act as a pathfinder.

A concern of many teachers is that learners may not attend if they have the material in advance. Providing partial outlines of material can reduce this concern. Also, it reduces the amount of notes the learner must make as they have an outline to write notes around. Outlines can also help recollection during revision periods.

Furthermore, as the material is often put online/printed in some form, it is fairly safe to assume that any one piece of material has at least three modes of transmission: lecture, print and online. Knowing this can help the lecturer construct a plan of action to better support a range of uses.

The learning environment

Although material is predominately delivered in the lecture/classroom environment it is now also widely made available online. Typically material is stored and accessed using an institution’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), perhaps Blackboard or Moodle.
Knowing that students will have access to the material in their own time provides new opportunities to expand on standard linear delivery. For example, you may choose to use hyperlinks to further materials/online resources or to use interactive features not available in a lecture/classroom environment.

Remember to be consistent in how you label each file for later retrieval, how you deal with access rights and where you will be storing or archiving files. Note that many learners do not have the software at home to view the file and may need to use free viewers to enable them to view the file.

Consider providing case studies, resources and further reading using the notes feature of your presentation software to enrich the visual presentation and to support independent learning and to improve interactivity. Remember the purpose of providing materials in additional formats is to improve the accessibility and usability of your materials.

Self-directed

Students will, most likely, be using your material in a self-directed manner at some point. Providing the students with the material in multiple format types (such as notes or interactive elements) will improve usability and accessibility.

Paper-based

Giving students material in advance allows them to write preparatory notes and prepare questions thus helping them to get the most out of the face-to-face session.
Giving students material at the start of the teaching session allows them to reduces the amount of notes they have to take and help them to formulate questions during the session.

This should result in more accurate and more useful notes for the student to use during revision.

Access to the materials

Providing learners with access to your material will enable feature enhancements to be added to the material such as interactive features including:

Branching: use of hidden slides (see ‘Branching’ below)
Hyperlinking: Links to other slides, other material and third party content such as external websites

Pre-session access can also enable location-based learning: online but also offline (e.g. when travelling on a train). Access to the material will benefit students who missed the face to face session due to illness. Non-native English speaking students may also benefit as they can take their time to understand the material. Concerns of lecture absence aside, material in advance will suit some types of learner (see learning styles).

Copyright

Teaching staff often express concern over their ability to control access to the material if they make it widely available. Copying material has been done in many ways and is nothing new.

However, consider the benefits and risks involved in doing so and remember that course material is of limited usefulness to anybody not studying the topic. Clearly label your material with your institution’s details and remember the potential benefit to the students of making materials widely available. Web-based services such as SlideShare allow you to upload material in a format that can be viewed but is difficult to take without authorisation. Ensure that you have permission and correctly reference the work of others if included in your own material. If this is not done others may feel you are infringing their copyright.

For more information on visit our SlideShare advice document.

Different ways of learning

People learn in different ways and attempts have been made to classify these differences: they are referred to as “learning styles”.

Identifying different learning styles leads us to use multiple delivery formats that support different ways in which the student may learn. We cannot be certain what will work and for whom but by planning ahead we can minimise development time and maximise the breadth of learning materials.

As mentioned above, in a lecture scenario, typically the focus is on the teacher and not the student. The student will normally be mostly listening and writing supporting notes. Providing several different methods of delivery (such as lectures, notes, interactive sessions or material each delivered at a different pace) increases the opportunity for people with different learning styles to choose material appropriate for them. Combined with thoughtful consideration of how to include digital media for maximum flexibility, extending your material can help enthuse the vast majority of learners and improve accessibility for all.

Presentation software allows the use of a range of digital media to support different types and ways of learning. Most presentation software supports embedded images, audio, video and other file formats such as animated Flash.

Supporting learning styles

Summary of Felder and Soloman’s ‘Learning styles and strategies’ (2005) taken from the book of Holmes and Gardner (2006) ‘E-learning concepts and practice’, Sage, p104

Active (Learn by discussing, applying or explaining to others)
Provide material to be provided/embedded to allow learner to share and discuss with others e.g. use of SlideShare.

Reflective (Prefer to think about it quietly first)
Provide the material in advance with enough detail to give learner the opportunity

Sensing (learners tend to like learning facts)
Use hyperlinks to detailed information

Intuitive (learners often prefer discovering possibilities and relationships)
Use branching to allow users to discover material based on their choices

Visual (Learners remember what they see, pictures, charts, films etc)
Where appropriate use visuals to support and/or enhance your content either as embedded or hyperlinked resources.

Verbal (Learners get more out of words - written and spoken)
Consider providing some material with audio, especially where it can add context (interviews, sounds, environment)

Sequential (Learners tend to gain understanding in linear steps)
Each presentation file should be well structured and easily navigable.

Global (Absorbing material almost randomly without seeing connections, and then suddenly understanding it)
Use a range of media that although may appear individually independent are actually interconnected.

It is worth noting that paper-based material may also be used to further support learners and is often useful for lengthy material. This may be provided by the teaching staff or by making the material available in digital format e.g. PDF for the learner to read and possibility print.

Designing your PPT

Designing your material well is crucial for success. A good design is one that will work in its intended environments and enable your material to be understood. Once you know the target delivery methods (lecture, print etc.) you can consider how best to design your material whilst supporting the different learning objectives you set out to achieve. We have all viewed material that is a struggle to read due to poor design choices.

An important and often overlooked source of inspiration and guidance is to consider principles from the worlds of print and web design that can be used for your material. Such guidance might include:

Identifying the audience
Clear legibility
Attractive use of colour
Effective layout
Use of digital media objects clearly support learning points and do not detract from the content

Considering your content, delivery and objectives will help to ensure that you produce material to a high standard. Many of these design decisions are subtle and can be repurposed for every set of materials that you create.
One key aspect of your design that will have a high reward is the use of branching.

Branching

If the learners will have access to the materials pre or post lecture, consider adding interaction with the use of branching (Shown below via SlideShare). Instead of using the standard linear presentation format that simply passes from start to finish the use of buttons and hidden slides can add nice interactive touches such as revealing answers or case studies depending on the learner’s input. Branching, in conjunction with hidden slides can help reinforce key points and assist learners.

Shortcomings and pitfalls

Presentation software can be extremely useful and powerful. However it is often used as a “one size fits all” and is often used as the only digital tool. This can mean that at times the material may suffer from the following:

Lack of context Bulleted lists can overly simplify meaning and reduce context
Too concise It is tempting to reduce the copy and therefore remove meaning

Poor design Many of us are not designers and find it difficult to accurately convey meaning with use of positioning, typography and colour which is well established in the print medium
Too linear Often material is delivered from start to finish with no branching or interaction during the delivery

Multiple versions mean that how the file looks in one version may vary to that of the learner

Embedding media such as video and audio is often difficult

Proprietary formats the vast majority of file formats are not open and this may have an affect for archiving and retrieving material in the future.

By being prepared and giving some consideration to design concepts and learning objectives, these issues can easily be overcome.

Conclusion

The premise of this advice document was to raise awareness of the potential of producing high quality presentation material that can be repurposed and reused. It is important to understand that getting to grips with your audience, their environment, their choices and behaviours and the design of learning materials can produce greatly improved results.

We hope this will help you to create rich learning experiences that are fun to teach and interact with. A multi-layered approach (adapted for each delivery method) will ensure that your tailored materials meet real world usage requirements. Multi-media presentation materials are a cost effective way to deliver impressive results and can be as exciting as the best Web 2.0 resources.