Giving Students Powerpoints

[HigherEd7]

When teaching online is it a good idea to give students a copy of the powerpoint? I know some people do it and some people don't. I try to put myself in the shoes of the student if I had the PowerPoint would I take the time to read the chapter. 

[arcturus]

Do you provide the powerpoint slides when you teach face-to-face? Whatever reasoning you use for that decision should also apply to online lectures. In my case, providing the powerpoint slides makes it more likely that students will take notes, as they have the basis of the lecture readily available. But that is also because my lectures contain more information than what is printed on the slides.

[HigherEd7]

Do you provide the powerpoint slides when you teach face-to-face? Whatever reasoning you use for that decision should also apply to online lectures. In my case, providing the powerpoint slides makes it more likely that students will take notes, as they have the basis of the lecture readily available. But that is also because my lectures contain more information than what is printed on the slides.

Thank you for the response. I very seldom give students the powerpoints in my face to face course and maybe this is something I need to start. I was thinking about giving them the PowerPoint in the notes format so they can read and take notes.

[VaticanCameos]

During a normal semester, I post the PowerPoint slides both as the 3 and the 6 slides per page handout pdf formats.  My slides have lots of images, many of which aren't in the texts we use.  I don't normally allow students to use laptops in my classroom and lab, and this format, along with some reminders, helps to encourage students to take notes.  Once we transitioned to remote learning, several students requested the complete file so they could take notes electronically because they don't have printers at home.  So I did, but I removed my presenter notes which wouldn't make much sense to them anyway.  My lecture content was narrated PowerPoints (broken into 10 minute chunks with some typing and drawing onscreen during the lecture) with captions that could be downloaded to be used as a transcript. 

[Sun_Worshiper]

I post the ppts online the day before class.  Some students follow them as I lecture, others seem not to notice that they are there.  Like VaticanCameos, I like to put images (e.g. tables and charts) instead of text, so that the slides enhance the readings instead of summarizing them and so students can't depend on the slides without readings or lecture to put them into context.  I don't think it affects how much students do or do not read.

[theblackbox]

I don't give PowerPoints for class because I've found students interpret that to mean they don't need to take notes, and then are upset when they are unprepared for the exams. Also, I highlight why physical note taking by hand is superior to typing notes (the deeper level processing of using shorthand and consolidating what is most important, rather than trying to transcribe word for word). Most of my students appreciate the rationale for it by the end of the course even if they start of resistant to the idea, because they become better note-takers over time.

I am rethinking this for my hybrid/online class situation that I'll be facing this fall. A large part of the reason I'm rethinking it is that I know my assessment methods will change, too, because open-book/open-notes has to be the presumed default if the exam is administered online. (We have no paid proctoring services.) Does it make the hand-written (or typed since I can't regulate how they take notes while on Zoom) notes that much more important and valuable, and so I should provide no slides? Or should I restructure the exams to remove all questions that aren't application-based and essay format, and provide slides that are even more bare bones than usual? ("5 ways to reduce __" with numbered bullets 1-5 being all that's on the slide.) I haven't decided yet.

[nescafe]

I've always given my powerpoints to the class as study guides.

However, this quarter, most of my students copy-pasted those powerpoints into exam answers, a novel (and not unclever) form of cheating that I've never encountered before.

Another student uploaded my slides to Coursehero, along with other materials that put both my own privacy and that of my students at risk.

If I'm teaching online again, I will probably not furnish my students with my slides. It has stopped them from viewing the lectures and opens far too many new opportunities for academic integrity violations.

[OneMoreYear]

During a normal semester, I post the PowerPoint slides both as the 3 and the 6 slides per page handout pdf formats.  My slides have lots of images, many of which aren't in the texts we use.  I don't normally allow students to use laptops in my classroom and lab, and this format, along with some reminders, helps to encourage students to take notes.  Once we transitioned to remote learning, several students requested the complete file so they could take notes electronically because they don't have printers at home.  So I did, but I removed my presenter notes which wouldn't make much sense to them anyway. 

My process is like VaticanCameos. In a typical face-to-face semester, my powerpoints are posted on the LMS in PDF handout form and, as is relatively typical in my department, I give out hard copies for them to write on in class.  But, since the switch to remote, I've been posting the powerpoints with my notes removed, so they can take notes directly on the powerpoints in the notes sections. Like many here, I try to have limited text on the slides themselves, with primarily a few phrases with pictures, graphs, and charts (though I continue to work on this), so my powerpoints slides couldn't be posted as answers to exam question, as was described by nescafe (or at least they would be really poor answers to the question).  And my notes pages would not make much sense to them anyway for most of the classes I teach, as they are notes like "talk about that one time with the baloney and sushi" and "compare/contrast to results by Bill & Ted, 1989). With newer classes my notes pages have more information to remind me what points I need to cover, but they wouldn't help the students understand the material.

During the remote experiment this summer, I have had several times where my screen has frozen such that students could hear me, but I couldn't do anything visual in the system, so it was useful to be able to say, "OK, go to the next slide (slide 13 with the picture of the alien, slinky, and gametable) and follow along while I fix this."

[Parasaurolophus]

I do the same as theblackbox, for the same reasons.

IRL, if I give them the powerpoint slides then they (1) don't even attempt the reading, (2) don't bother taking notes (why they think that's a good idea, given how little is actually on the slides, is a total mystery), and (3) stop coming to class. It just seems to reinforce or excuse their bad habits.

Online, they do get the slides. That's because I'm just narrating the slides, with some bonus video content. I don't pretend it's good pedagogy, but that's what they're getting until I'm given the time and resources to develop better materials.

Of course, I just discovered at least one student who didn't understand that I was narrating the slides. No wonder he was confused.

[mamselle]

I've made my Ppts available in a class notebook kept on closed reserve at the library. If they want them, they go and copy them.

I don't know how many did overall, but when I'd retrieve the notebooks at the end of the semester, the check-out tags (they could also take them out for 24-hrs over a weekend) didn't have many stamps, so I'm guessing not many.

More recently, posting things on CMS, as noted on a thread elsewhere, I didn't see many folks opening those, either.   

I figure I make my classes pretty hard, so any help they get from anything I have to offer is fine.

I'm not enclosing anything proprietary, and I figure the point is for them to learn in whatever way works for them.

All my quizes and exams are open-book/open note-book, anyway.

So, if I dangle a few balloon strings down and they catch an idea that way, so much the better.

M. 

[lightning]

Giving out my pptx accomplishes absolutely nothing except to keep the Disabilities office off my back.

[spork]

Why give away what you can sell for money?

[Hegemony]

My students in my online classes can download the PowerPoints whenever they want. Why wouldn't they be able to?  So they can watch them as many times as they want. They're in PDF form, though, so they couldn't cut and paste from them. Anyway, I don't give exams in which the answer is spelled out on any PowerPoint.

[marshwiggle]

Since no-one has suggested anything similar, I'll explain my use of powerpoints.
Two things about my courses:

• I don't have a textbook for any of them.
• The lab component of the course is very significant; i.e. students learn most from labs and projects.

My lecture notes are posted online publicly. I want them to be  a useful reference for students, so they contain

• complete derivations
• clear, properly-labelled diagrams

In the lab, when someone asks a questions which is answered in my lectures note, I direct the students to the appropriate lecture.

Background:
When  I was an undergraduate, I was annoyed at how lousy the textbooks were as references, because so many important derivations were not included in order to be left for assignment questions. So, the professionally printed, carefully typeset book didn't contain important material that I might want to look up later; that would be in my messy handwritten lecture notes (if the prof covered it in lecture) or in my handwritten assignment. Since both of these would probably be lost or discarded after the course they were a poor repository for information.

I still feel much the same; the value of assignments is in applying knowledge, so leaving important things out of the text is (to me) unproductive.

So, for that reason, my lecture notes contain the derivations, illustrations, etc. that students can refer back to later. And they're online and public so they can look back at them whenever they want.

Just for a different perspective.....

[jerseyjay]

In my classroom courses, I do not use PowerPoint. Which means I do not hand them out.

(I do not use PowerPoint for several reasons. I find that PowerPoints inhibit good discussion, since they imply a linear way of looking at the material. I find that many students simply copy down the slides without actually thinking what they are supposed to get out of a class. I find that PowerPoint encourages me, as an instructor, to spend too much time on preparing the slides and less on preparing what I want to say--my lecture notes are written on yellow legal pads, and I often redo them before class. I also worked for a while at a company where PowerPoint presentation took the place of saying anything meaningful. I am not religious about any of this, so I won't get mad if you like PowerPoint.)

Online, I often post PowerPoint presentations, which walk the students through key terms and concepts. This does not provide all the answers they need, but (hopefully) serves as a guide to the reading. Obviously I let students download these.