Bullet points: good or evil?
I get a daily email from the Chronicle of Higher Education that summarizes current articles. I’m going through some older emails today, and stumble across this description:
A PROFESSOR reduces his teaching life to a few bullet points.
Given all the recent discussion about bullet points and presentations, I had to read the column. In it, John D. Arras writes about the simple rules he follows in his teaching. Describing his final point, he writes:
I generally believe that PowerPoint is the spawn of Satan. It breeds passivity in the students and it disconnects the speaker from the audience. (It also encourages professors to reduce their deepest, most private thoughts on teaching to a few bullet points.)
April 22, 2006 at 5:59 pm
You know, I just had a conversaton about this a few days ago…a rather heated discussion with someone who was actually ADVOCATING mandatory presentation software lectures in first-year college courses. As if students don’t have enough boredom to deal with going through General Ed. courses…