Powerpoints/Lecturing

[HigherEd7]

HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLP!  I spend hours developing a PowerPoint reading and preparing and the majority of the students just sit there and read from the slides. The same students answer the questions in the class. This has been one of those when you ask yourself is this really worth it and what am I doing wrong.

[Parasaurolophus]

I have similar problems with my students here, and it takes a lot of work to get them all to contribute. Most days, that energy expenditure makes me want to just give up entirely (although I have to say, the student reviews of the class are glowing--it's not quite enough for me, though). I try to model best practices for them, including for note-taking, but it's a losing battle. I haven't yet figured out how best to reach the students in my reading-based courses. (Surprisingly, my formal courses are just fine.)

A few thoughts, however:

• Make sure there's not too much info on your slides. Treat them like cue cards. It's easier for them to take notes that way, so they're at least mostly paying attention to what you say.
• Activities and games are your friend. Especially if you teach formal material: gamifying participation works really well.
• Don't make the slides available to students--or, if you do, only do so towards the end of the course. You really need to incentivize their engagement with the material. They will absolutely complain about this.
• Have a think about how to regulate participation. The coloured slip/popsicle stick method works well for me.
• Rethink the kinds of questions you're asking, and think about why they aren't answering. Are the questions too specific? Since most of my students never do any reading, they would struggle to answer anything too technical or too closely tied to the reading. I can ask them to think of examples from their own experience, however, or to adopt a particular position and try to convince a partner who adopts the opposite position, or to puzzle through a small excerpt.
• Spend less time on your lectures. Nobody will be able to tell.

[nescafe]

Everything Parasaurolophus says. My powerpoints don't have more than a word or two on them, and even then, it's because I introduce a lot of foreign concepts/words in the classroom and I include them in the presentation mostly so students learn to spell them correctly.

Everyone does their lessons differently, but I break my class session into 20 minute increments. This means that my standard session--80 minutes--gives me time to plan 4 modules. At most, two of the modules are lecture-oriented, and I use those to introduce new ideas, give some historical context, or deliver basic content. The other two 20-minute modules, I use some sort of activity or socratic method to get students engaging the day's material in a meaningful way. I'm a historian, so this usually means a discussion of primary sources or of the readings more broadly. I've tried a number of things:

- think/pair/share, in response to a broad question related to the readings
- create groups, and ask students to respond to a list of questions on the board (usually, I will have 5 groups, 5 questions, and each group is responsible for 1 and will report back to the class).
- primary source haikus. students boil down primary sources into pithy poems, and get extra points if they are funny.
- debate or mock courtroom scenarios. This is more involved because you have to help students mediate disagreement, but you can ask them to prepare positions on a given issue and present to the class.

All of the above usually take 2 20-minute modules. students work in small groups for 20 minutes, and then we run the outcomes for twenty. You get the idea.

But above everything, Parasaurolophus's advice to spend less time prepping lecture is wise. More prep is often just more prep. You reach a point where more tweaking doesn't make the lesson better.

[eigen]

I use slides only for things I can't easily or accurately represent by drawing or writing on the board.

One of the main reasons I do that is that it focuses students on what I'm doing as I'm doing it, and they start learning how to take notes on the important details by what I write down and emphasize.

[polly_mer]

This seems like the perfect place to make a pitch again for backwards design.

What are the goals of the course in terms of student learning outcomes?

What are good ways to ensure that students who make an effort will meet those learning outcomes?

What needs to be done each class period/unit to help the students help themselves?

Since I think I remember a question about teaching online from the OP, I will address that situation as well.  If you're teaching fully online, then don't just put up PowerPoints for students to read because that's what they are going to do.  Draw from all the activities available to you based on what will help students learn the material or practice the skills.  The focus should always be on the research/experience/knowledge on how people learn whatever you're trying to teach and choosing techniques that align with best practices.

There are courses I flat out refused to offer online either as an instructor or as the director of online education because online is a poor platform for what's necessary to truly learn.  If you have one of those courses, then that's a conversation to have with your chair.

[Caracal]

• Make sure there's not too much info on your slides. Treat them like cue cards. It's easier for them to take notes that way, so they're at least mostly paying attention to what you say.

Yes, I think of my Powerpoints as an outline. Basically the text gives the students the headers and they should be filling in the rest with their own notes. I only do bullet points when I have some sort of list or summary. (Results of the War of 1812, for example) When possible, I also try to have images that elucidate key concepts and that we can discuss. Often, talking about an image draws more students into the discussion.

[HigherEd7]

Thank you very much for your responses and I am going to add some of these tips into my class tomorrow. I think it is very hard for any professor to teach a course on weightlifting or exercise physiology because the majority of students think they know everything because they have a membership at Golds gym or they watched a few videos on Youtube.  I spend so much time reading, developing powerpoints, preparing for my courses that I am not even enjoying life! I want to be able to write and publish.

[Parasaurolophus]

Thank you very much for your responses and I am going to add some of these tips into my class tomorrow. I think it is very hard for any professor to teach a course on weightlifting or exercise physiology because the majority of students think they know everything because they have a membership at Golds gym or they watched a few videos on Youtube.  I spend so much time reading, developing powerpoints, preparing for my courses that I am not even enjoying life! I want to be able to write and publish.

The internet is chock full of videos of people lifting weights with terrible form (including Donald Trump Jr.'s deadlift video). A fun regular in-class exercise would be to show them one of these videos, and have them point out what's going wrong.

[wareagle]

academicslidedesign.org

A great free resource.

[HigherEd7]

Thank you for the information

academicslidedesign.org

A great free resource.

[Aster]

What everybody else said.

I stopped giving out my instructional slides to students a long time ago, and attendance, punctuality, and class participation all went up immediately.

[pepsi_alum]

I do still post my PowerPoint slides for students for ADA/accessibility reasons, but because I use minimalist/keyword format on them, accessing them isn't very useful to students who aren't attending class regularly. I also heartily echo the suggestions made by Nescafe and Parasaurolophus. At one of my previous jobs, I found that giving a quiz at the end of class was the only way to get students to consistently take notes or to engage in class activities. They hated it, but it did increase compliance and eventually produce better student learning.

Part of me wishes I had more flexibility to boldly restructure my classes. If I had better handwriting, I'd seriously consider dumping PowerPoint completely and just write an outline of main topics on the whiteboard. But I'm currently at a  school where "teaching effectiveness = student eval scores," and because I get good eval numbers with my current instructional model, I'm reluctant to change things up much.

[Juvenal]

I post the PPs a day or two before the lecture; I give out a précis handout of the points before the lecture.

Is this a good idea or a coddling?  Does it make them lazy or give them a focus?  Can't really say (who am I to say?) if this is a good idea/bad idea, but w/o this I wonder just what would help my class "get" the points (I'm STEM.  Yes, yes, the splendor of my presentation should be more than enough, right?  Also CC).