Using PowerPoint Presentations in Higher Education
21st century, a modernized era has put forth a new revolution in every field, including education which didn’t remain untouched with these technological advancements leading to betterment.
PowerPoint has managed to bring about a new revolution at every level of education starting from elementary schools and ranging upto higher education. Further, Classrooms are being equipped with projectors and other such devices supporting delivery of an effective presentation.
Nowadays, students are being taught to use advanced technology right from a very tender age. All this is ultimately leading in inculcation of a positive outlook of students towards education. They no more feel education as a burden, rather they are enjoying it.
There is a buzz around PowerPoint and and a movement called Death By PowerPoint but most presenters forget that PowerPoint is a visual tool, as mentioned by Dave Gray in Call for Visual Literacy. PowerPoint is accessible, flexible, modular, easy to read, modular and powerful tool.
Many educational institutes are promoting the usage of PowerPoint which is gradually enhancing capability of students to present their ideas confidently before people.
Describing about some of the major advantages:
Exploring new potential within students
Presentations assist students in exploring new capabilities and hidden talents. Besides this they get a chance to interact with other students which leads to increase their level of confidence. In a recent survey, it was found that student’s are able to retain more data and information that is shown in form of slides as compared to the oral lectures delivered to them.
Role of Teachers in PowerPoint presentations
Teachers can guide students with important tips and tricks used in designing an effective PowerPoint presentation. Generally teachers advise students to add live voice, pictures, colors or even videos if possible. Teachers can also prepare lectures over PowerPoint and share them through internet. This will benefit the students who were not able to attend a lecture due to any reason.
Now focusing on students’ point of view, let’s move to their likes and dislikes regarding PowerPoint slides.
Organize, Visualize and Practice are the three major Do’s that must be taken care of while preparing a presentation.
Generally, students don’t prefer slides overridden with excess of data. Sometimes, content is great, still level of output is very low.
Here are some important points that need to be kept in mind while putting the content and making dynamic, successful & interactive presentation:
- Make sure that it is simple and fairly understandable.
- Content should be relevant to the topic of presentation.
- Brainstorm new ideas
- Always try to maintain a futuristic approach.
- Keep the information displayed in short chunks
- Make sure that alignment of text as well as its font size is adequate.
Finally, PowerPoint has proved to be beneficial in developing an educational environment that would work beyond traditional boundaries to attain a new height of success apart from staying connected with innovative technology. If you need to download education PowerPoint templates for presentations, you can find lot of these designs for free and diagrams or charts for your MBA and Higher Education or University presentations.