Last week I found myself in the classroom without my prepared powerpoint lecture. I won't go into the gory details. Let's just say that it involved an early morning fuzzy headed brain, lost keys, a laptop locked in the trunk and some very kind friends who helped me arrive on campus just in time to teach my class. When I first started teaching a few years ago this scenario would have been my worst nightmare, but I actually walked into the classroom pretty calm. I was building off of an activity that we had done the class period before, the subject was something I know very well and I was prepared for the class.
In the previous class period students had watched videos of crayfish fighting, we talked about how to construct an ethogram and then they had scored two different fights for fight intensity, looking for specific behaviors. I had wanted to bring crayfish into the classroom, but I have a 50 minute class period with classes immediately before and after me in the same room and 64 students (active learning fail or sane alternative choice?). I had the students look at and discuss the data and then we had a class discussion about the types of questions you can ask with this type of data. I drew the approximate results of a couple of experiments on the board and we discussed them. Overall, the class went well. One thing I noticed was that without the distraction of the computer I found myself interacting with the students more. I actually walked into the middle of the classroom to talk to the students, and I don't think the students lost anything. The graphs I drew on the board were proportionally accurate if not exact and allowed us to talk about the experiments.
For some time I have wondered if my use of powerpoint makes me a worse teacher. When I was an undergrad, we didn't have this fancy-schmancy powerpoint. My professors used overheads and filled the board with diagrams and writing. I took actual notes on paper, that were of spotty use to me later, feverishly scratching away to get it all down. I always wondered how they did it. I experienced my first powerpoint lectures in grad school and I often found them harder to follow. The tendency is to put too many things on one slide and go through the slides way too fast. I also think that watching a powerpoint presentation is very passive, like watching a TV show. As a lecturer making the powerpoints takes FOREVER and sometimes I wonder if I could spend that time preparing in other ways. I have often wondered, if I am serious about being a good teacher should I ditch the powerpoint entirely?
There are a few things that keep me from doing this:
1. The students expect it. All of their classes us powerpoint and they are used to getting information this way and having access to the slides afterwards.
2. I have TERRIBLE and I mean terrible drawing skills and handwriting. I worry that anything I write or draw on the board will be completely unintelligable.
3. I really like having nice figures to point to.
4. Making the powerpoint helps me organize my thoughts and the structure of the class.
5. I can continually tweak the presentation from year to year and make it better and then still have those changes readily available to me when I go to give the lecture again.
There are some things I have done to try and make the presentations better. I am sure to include lots of discussion questions and think-pair-share activities. I try to think of the powerpoints more like old school slides; I make them mostly pictures or figures and then explain them. I consciously try to slow down. When I first started teaching I worried about running out material in my class period and would prepare almost a slide a minute (my poor students). Now I'm lucky if I get through 20 slides in a 50 minute class period, so I feel like I'm doing a better job. Still, if I were braver, I think I would ditch the slide show entirely, at least some of the time.
I would love to hear your opinions in the comments. What's the worst powerpoint presentation you've ever had to sit through? Do you use powerpoint when you lecture? How do you use it? Is an old school chalk talk with class discussion really the best way to go?
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