There is a place in hell where bad people go. In this place they are forced to watch PowerPoint presentations. But in the special place for the really bad people, a devil doesn’t just show the slides but reads them aloud, every word.
Not long ago I attended a typical academic conference. Several dozen professors updated their peers on their research with PowerPoint presentations. The professors, however, acted like their worst students.
Clearly, they were ignoring the presentations. Many were texting on their smartphones, checking their email and WhatsApp, shopping online. The clearest proof of this came during the Q&A. They asked questions that had been answered fully during the presentations.
Although all the professors in that room use PowerPoint, they hate being subjected to the typical presentation: slides dense with text, graphics filled with lines and numbers that are not easy to understand.
Why don’t we professors get the message? PowerPoint can be deadly.
Bad slides obscure the important message
Anyone involved in teaching and training frequently asks themselves how best to share their knowledge, research, and experience. Do our slides help or hurt?
I thought about this again while reading a blog post, Death by PowerPoint: The slide that killed 7 people. The author dissected a poorly worded slide that led NASA officials to underestimate the dangers to a Space Shuttle crew.
The lessons from that slide should be familiar to any journalist trained in writing in the inverted pyramid style.
–Put the most important information in the headline and the lead paragraph.
–Use simple, direct language. Avoid technical jargon.
–Make every word count. Cut out unneccessary terms.
–Spell out the abbreviated terms. Not everyone uses them.
–Do the math for the reader. Don’t make them use a calculator.
OK, sometimes I put a lot of information on a slide. Because I teach courses on media economics, in English, to non-native speakers, students tell me the slides help them follow the ideas. I show them one line of text at a time. I use a lot of graphics. Students use the slides to study for exams.
Still, the students consistently say that their favorite experiences of the course are the group research projects. They pick a topic to explore in depth and then make a presentation.
None of them tell me they love the PowerPoints. That is a pretty clear message.
Related: Is six hours a day on my phone too much? A survey of students