As more classrooms and
lecture halls replace overhead projectors with digital projectors, there is an
increasing demand for lectures to be presented using presentation software such
as PowerPoint, Keynote, Beamer or Impress.
Digital presentations have all
the benefits of overhead presentations, but with much more flexibility.
Animations, images, sound effects, hyperlinks to webpages,
video clips and graphs can all be easily added to a presentation. At the same
time, making a change can literally be done at the touch of a button or a click
of the mouse.
It has never been easier to
create digital presentations, but it is easy to become overwhelmed. While a
good Powerpoint can really enhance a lesson, a poorly
organized one can have quite the opposite effect: disengaging the audience and
making the lecture hard to follow. The following tips can help you create a
digital presentation for the first time, or help you improve your current
presentations.
Choosing your background and font:
Most presentation software
comes with ready-made backgrounds for you to use. In addition to these, there
are many free backgrounds available on the Internet, and it is even possible to
create your own. Whichever you choose to use, the background of your
presentation should be simple. Too many colours
and/or graphics can be distracting or make your text hard to see. Also, stick
to one background for the whole presentation for continuity.
Whatever you choose as your
background, be sure your text is legible. Use only one
font throughout the presentation, and choose a colour
that stands out well against your background.
It does not matter whether
you prefer a dark background and a light font, or a light background and dark
font, but be weary of backgrounds which require BOTH light and dark fonts in
order to be legible.
Choosing Content for your Slides:
Digital presentations are
meant to guide both the speaker and the audience through the lecture. Because
of this, each slide should highlight the main points of discussion, but should
NOT include absolutely everything you mean to say. If a slide contains too many
words, the audience will spend more time reading (or frantically copying!) than
listening to the speaker. Full sentences, rather than point form, also make a
slide look more complicated and will tempt you to simply read the slide aloud
instead of engaging the audience. The points you choose to present should be
both cues to lead you through the lecture and key points for the audience to
remember.
Apart from text, other
elements of your slides should be added in moderation. It is a good idea to
break up the presentation with a few topical graphics on the occasional slide,
but be careful to not have too many. Animations (such as having text zoom in
across the slide), if used, should be consistent throughout the presentation
but not too distracting. Sound effects should only be used sparingly: having
the computer beep every single time a point flies across the screen can get
annoying after the fifth or sixth slide!
Some other tips for creating
slides:
·
Have one or two
slides for every minute of presentation
·
Start with a
table of contents, and end with a concluding slide
·
Have no more
than 5 points per slide
·
Make sure your
text is large enough to read from a distance
·
Avoid using all
capitals
·
Be sure to
proofread your slides for spelling mistakes
When NOT to use presentation software:
While it may be tempting to
convert all your lectures to digital presentations, there are some topics for
which it is better to use conventional methods. One of the most important of
these is the derivation of equations. It is much more beneficial to the
students to see you walk through the logical processes of deriving a formula
rather than just reading or copying the derivation down. If you would rather
the students work the derivation out for themselves,
give them the first step and the final result only. Imagine trying to listen to
the speaker while you are copying this down and trying to follow it!
What else can you do with digital presentations?
Some professors are choosing
to put copies of their digital presentations on their course homepage so that
students can download them at will to review or study. While this can be quite
handy if a student misses a class, there could also be negative ramifications –
some people do not like having their lectures available to just anyone who
happens across the webpage, and some students see it
as a good reason to miss class as they can get the lecture content online
anyway.
Most presentation software allow you to print off the slideshow so that your audience
can follow along without having to write everything down. You can take
advantage of this by posing questions in the slide or asking your students to
work through a simple derivation right there on the handout. You can save these
versions as PDF files to post on a website, and encourage the students to print
them out before class, or have printouts ready for class yourself.