Don’t blame PowerPoint, part 3
I described my first slide-free workshop as “flying by the seat of my pants”. Last week I taught a follow-up workshop, again without slides but with more preparation, and it felt great. I gave the students a handout with the URLs for the sites we used and some screenshots to jog their memories later, and during the workshop I focused on talking directly to the students and demonstrating the skills I was teaching. The students seemed much more engaged than I remember them being in previous years, and they asked lots of good questions. A few even followed up by making appointments with me for additional instruction.
I don’t think that it was the elimination of slides that improved the workshop. I think eliminating the slides made me focus on the content of the presentation and on my speaking style.
As John Dupuis says in Confessions of a Science Librarian, you can give a good presentation using PowerPoint, but you do have to put some effort into it.
I’m putting together another presentation for grad students, and I originally intended to use slides but to be very judicious about it. Well, when I made myself scrutinize each slide, I ended up deciding that I didn’t need any slides at all. So I think that’s my new rule: slides are just fine in presentations, but make sure their use is justified.
