PowerPoint is a ubiquitous tool in the classroom and, as a result, taking notes on slides has become a mainstay of many students’ study cycle routine.
A well-designed PowerPoint presentation not only supports student learning, but also ensures accessibility to students who have difficulty discerning colors or interpreting text and speech. These presentations facilitate learning for students with and without disabilities.
Here are a few tips to make your slides more effective tools for presentation and review for all students. The key is to avoid designs that buid in “extraneous cognitive overload.”
- Use a Simple Template: A colorful template with lots of graphics not related to content can distract from your message and crowd out the graphics that your students really need to see.
- Keep Text to a Minimum: If the goal is to get students to listen and synthesize what you are saying, then you want them to take “generative” notes. If you give them all the notes on the slide, they are likely to become passive readers.
- Keep Animations Reasonable: While using the animation tools in PowerPoint to build ideas and give answers to question is valuable, if your text wiggles, dances, or spirals on the screen, it distracts and fatigues.
- Use Basic Colors – Black and white often work best for text delivery. It is more visible on the screens in the lecture halls, on devices, and in print. It’s hard to read gray text on a black background. Don’t be afraid to use color to highlight important points, but keep it to three colors per slide.
- Know the Family – The Font Family: The fonts you use on your slides and handouts are sort of like your handwriting. They can be a unique as you are, but be careful not to let creativity get in the way of clarity. Fonts that naturally go together create a streamlined visual experience for your students and make it easier for them to read. Limit your fonts to two families.
- Point Size Matters: Some educators suggest you should not use anything smaller than 30 point font size on a slide, especially in lecture halls. (This does not apply to citations.) Using a bigger font will also keep you from putting too much information on the slide. You can always use a visual with no text at all.
The key: “Simplify, simplify, simplify.” PowerPoint should make your life easier, not harder.
Of course, using PowerPoint to present multimedia, photographs or diagrams is almost always a benefit in a CVM classroom.