PowerPoint, No! Cyberspace, Yes

Tom Creed
Saint John's University
Collegeville, Minnesota

Technology in teaching is nothing new. We can hardly think of teaching today without books and overheads; these are hardly controversial technologies. The technology at issue these days is digital, or computer-based, technology. My experience is that digital technology can enhance our students' learning, but only if our goals for our students' learning drive its use. We need to view technology as but one of many means of accomplishing our goals. Rather than trying to figure out how we can employ digital technology, we need to ask ourselves, "What do we want to accomplish in our courses, and is digital technology a good way of advancing our teaching goals?"

Not all digital technologies are created equal, at least in terms of their pedagogical value. Some, by the very nature of how they are most likely to be used, have great potential for enhancing student learning, while others have little potential. To illustrate this point, let me compare the two forms of digital technology most popular with faculty currently—electronic communication (specifically E-mail and electronic conferencing) and presentation graphics (represented by Microsoft's PowerPoint, the most popular software of its kind). Given my pedagogical goals, this comparison will show that electronic communication has great potential for enhancing learning, while PowerPoint is of little or no value. What are my pedagogical goals?

In my courses, I want my students to apply what they learn to their lives. I want the knowledge to become fundamental to their world views. For example, in my Principles of Learning and Behavior course, I want my students to use the concepts presented to help them understand, and improve, their lives. Five years from now, when their boss gives them that certain look and says "In My Office—Right Now," they'll recognize that little knot in the pit of their stomach and think, "Oooooh! Pavlovian conditioning!" Moreover, I want them to understand the principles so well that they'll have some strategies to cope with the stress that arises from Pavlovian conditioning.

I can identify several characteristics of good pedagogy that contribute to meeting my goals. Among these are:

1. Courses should focus on learning rather than teaching (student-centered vs. teacher-centered).

2. Interaction with the material should be student-controlled rather than teacher-controlled.

3. Content delivery should be based on student knowledge, driven by frequent formative feedback (classroom assessment).

4. Courses should be structured so that students interact with material in a pedagogically sound way.

5. Finally, this should all be accomplished in the most parsimonious way.

Here's a comparison between electronic communication and PowerPoint on these five key pedagogical characteristics.

Comparison of Electronic Communication and PowerPoint

Student- vs. Teacher-controlled
Electronic Communication is student-controlled. Students decide when and where they interact with the course material and each other. This allows them to work when they work best, and have the most time to devote to their work. Students are also in control of how much time they spend using it, and when they make their communication public. This is particularly important with electronic conferencing, in that more reflective, introverted students can take as much time as they need to compose what they want to say, and then post it when they are comfortable with what they have said. Since conversation is no longer in real time, the quick and assertive no longer dominate. This levels the playing field for individuals whose voices may not be heard in the traditional classroom discussion.
PowerPoint lectures are teacher-controlled. Ready or not, here it comes. The instructor controls how much time is spent with the course material and the pace of interaction. If a student didn't get a particular point when the slide was up, he's left foundering. It's gone. This can be particularly problematic if later points of the lecture depend on understanding earlier points. Too fast? Too slow? Too bad. Didn't get your hand up in time? There's always the next class meeting.

Classroom Assessment
Electronic Communication facilitates classroom assessment—monitoring an electronic conference gives invaluable feedback on what students are thinking about the subject matter, where they are having difficulty understanding key concepts and so on. Also, having students E-mail pre-class writing assignments a few hours before

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Using PowerPoint in the classroom doesn't necessarily make you a bad person. It does, however, mean that your emphasis is on the quality of your presentation rather than your students' learning.

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Structuring Students' Interaction with Course Material
Electronic Communication allows the instructor to structure when and how students interact with course material outside class. An electronic conference assignment between class meetings (particularly valuable with classes that meet infrequently) can ask students to make a posting one day, then respond to everyone else's postings the following day. Having students E-mail assignments a few hours before class not only assures that they are prepared, but that they have had a chance to let their ideas incubate before they arrive.
PowerPoint structures how material is presented in class. But does this structure assist learning or constrict course material to a narrow format (outlines)? It can present multimedia material well, but it does nothing to help you structure how your students interact with the material during the 98% of their lives that they aren't in your class.

Resource Requirements
Electronic Communication does not require great sophistication to use, and is generally available already to faculty and students (e.g., no additional costs to the institution).
PowerPoint requires expensive equipment in the classroom (computer and digital projection system), and it frequently doesn't work as expected.

Electronic communication allows my students to be actively engaged with the material outside class-—it extends the classroom walls. It promotes active student learning because students must do something with the technology. If they don't, nothing happens. Electronic communication derives its advantages over traditional communication because it is asynchronous (time-independent) and asyntopic (place-independent). E-mail and electronic conferencing enhance active student learning simply by doing what they were designed to do-—promote conversation. PowerPoint provides none of these powerful pedagogical advantages. There are a couple of forces operating that make PowerPoint a bad pedagogical tool since its use is likely to make the teacher-centered classroom even more predominant:
1. It gives the illusion of being a better mousetrap, and
2. the demand characteristics of PowerPoint induce bad teaching.

The Illusion of a Better Mousetrap
You may have noticed that several of my arguments against PowerPoint are the same as those frequently made against the predominance of the lecture. PowerPoint exists to promote the lecture. Adding color, possibly motion and sound, and at least making one's points more attractive would seem to enhance a class. But does it? The problem with presentation graphics is inherent in the name—they're about presentation, not about learning. The name PowerPoint is likewise illuminating. It's designed so that the instructor can make his or her point powerfully. It also makes its point about who has power in the classroom.

PowerPoint was designed for people with something to sell. But are persuasion (what WordPerfect calls its presentation software) and education the same? When I was in high school in Southern California, your car defined you. The faster your car, the cooler you were. We had a saying, "If it don't go, chrome it." In other words, if it lacked the goods to perform, you could at least make it look good. PowerPoint lectures are like painting your Yugo candy-apple red and chroming it. It's still a Yugo. A chromed lecture is still a lecture, well-organized perhaps, stimulating hopefully, maybe even exciting to look at and listen to, but in the end it's fundamentally passive.

The insidious nature of The Better Mousetrap illusion becomes clear when one looks at how PowerPoint is generally used—in my experience, many professors view it as a way to get more content into their lectures. If you don't have to write it on the board, you can go through the material faster. It may help you "cover the material" better, but is learning enhanced? One advantage of the chalk board is it gives students a chance to synthesize what they've just heard.

Demand Characteristics
Using PowerPoint in the classroom doesn't necessarily make you a bad person. It does, however, mean that your emphasis is on the quality of your presentation rather than your students' learning. Why is PowerPoint almost always going to lead to bad teaching? It's in the nature of the beast. Certain demand characteristics of our environment make it highly likely that we will behave in certain ways. The concept of demand characteristics comes from experimental psychology—the environment in which we find ourselves dictates, to a large extent, what we will do. Any software is an environment with subtle demand characteristics. What else can you do with presentation graphics other than make presentations? The environment of electronic communication, on the other hand, promotes two-way communication. I don't mean to imply that it can't be used poorly, but as an environment, the demand characteristics of electronic communication are more likely to promote good pedagogy than will those of PowerPoint. The character of individual pieces of software makes it highly likely that software will be used in a particular way. In the case of PowerPoint, that way will usually create a teacher-centered classroom.

Contact:
Tom Creed
Professor of Psychology
Saint John's University/ College of Saint Benedict
Collegeville, MN 56321
Phone/FAX-- SJU: (320) 363-3133, 3202
CSB: (320) 363-5157, 5197
E-mail: tcreed@csbsju.edu
http://bingen.cs.csbsju.edu/~tcreed