I just found a great article by Sandi Mann in The Guardian, called, “Why do 60% of students find their lectures boring? (Dr. Sandi Mann is senior lecturer in occupational psychology at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK.) You can probably guess what’s coming.
“One of the main contributors to student boredom is the use of PowerPoint. PowerPoint slides are a powerful aid to today’s lecturer, who can use it to easily prepare dozens of slides to accompany a lecture. And that is the problem – lecturers tend to prepare too many slides, pack them with too much information, and whizz through them in a manner that obliges students to spend most of the session attempting to copy copious amounts of text from the screen, while bypassing active processing of the material.”
What a great follow-up to my webinar last week on “Presenting to Teach & Inform: PowerPoint for Education & Training!”
The research Sandi did (with co-researcher Andrew Robinson) showed that almost 60% of students say that at least half their lectures are boring, and about 30% say that they find most or all of their lectures boring!
What do students do when they’re bored?
Daydream – 75% of students
Doodle – 66%
Chat with friends (electronically, perhaps) – 50%
Send texts – 45%
Pass notes to friends (the non-electronic version of chatting) – 38%
Over a quarter of students leave the lecture at the mid-session break!
Perhaps the culture is different in the United States. It’s almost certainly different in India; in fact each region probably has its own statistics. But I think that the research applies generally to many places in the world. It’s pretty shocking. After all, education is supposed to be stimulating and enlightening!
How can we change this terrible situation? Do you have a suggestion for educating educators?
The author states that lab work and computer sessions — practical sessions which required the students to be fully engaged with the material — received the highest boredom ratings. Thus it is an unfounded conclusion to say that PowerPoint is one of the main reasons students found lectures boring. No evidence is presented to justify this conclusion. Good teachers will always be good teachers no matter whether they use PowerPoint or not — are they able to keep students’ attention? I use PowerPoint in all my classes and students often tell me how interesting the classes are. It’s not the… Read more »
Mark, I agree that it isn’t PowerPoint’s fault. But it is the fault of teachers who use it as a crutch and put up slide after slide of text. That specific type of slide is described in the article. My guess is that you don’t do that. I’ve contacted the researcher to ask for more details, but my understanding of the article was that PowerPoint was felt to be a major issue in lectures (as opposed to labs and computer sessions, which probably don’t use PowerPoint). It’s clear that teachers need to improve their skills overall, but since I teach… Read more »
Ellen:
There was an interesting 15-page article in the November 2009 issue of Technical Communication magazine by Joanna K. Garner et al. on “Common Use of PowerPoint Versus the Assertion-Evidence Structure: A Cognitive Psychology Perspective.” (Vol. 56, No. 4, p. 331). I don’t think it’s out in the open on the Web, but it’s worth finding and reading.
Richard
Richard,
I e-mailed her, asking for a copy of the article. Maybe she’ll send it to me! I’m always interested in articles relating to PowerPoint, presenting, and education. Thanks for mentioning it.
Hi Ellen,
interesting article you found there! I’ll also be doing a short review in about a week’s time (I won’t forget to mention you, of course 😉 ).
The presentations at universities ARE mostly really bad, and the worst thing is, that students pick up the things they’ve learnt at university and continue to carry this presentation style into the business world. On the other hand, it’s also good news: There will be enough for us to do!.
Have a nice week,
Oliver
Hi, Many thanks you for this present article and surely I’ll share it to my facebook page.