From: John Orr [mailto:
johno@cameron.edu]
Dr. Gopinath's remarks on *.PPT lecture notes struck a chord with
me.
I teach management courses, and I use PowerPoint lectures in
most of my classes. I would suggest that HOW PowerPoint is
used determines its effectiveness in the classroom.
For my lectures, I use a mix of selected slides from the text
package and original slides that either expand upon the text, or
bring in outside material.
With PowerPoint, I can easily update the lecture as things change.
These changes can come as I move from one semester to the
next, or an hour before class if something happens in the world
today.
Also, PowerPoint has a much lower variable cost than
transparencies (you don't have to make new acetate rectangles
each time you adjust your lecture).
Handouts: The handouts contain slightly more than half the the
slides I will present. Even then, many of the handout slides will
contain blank spaces where the students can fill in sub-points
which appear on the lecture slides, and discussion items.
Again, the handouts provide the superstructure of the lecture so
that the students don't have to write their fingers to the bone to
keep up. And, as per Dr. Gopinath, I include diagrams which are
not included in the text, and diagrams from the text. Text
disgrams often have the boxes left blank so that the students can
use them during in-class exercises.
Also, some class times are lecture-heavy, others are activity-
heavy. Even during the lecture-heavy days, however, the focus is
on interactive lectures (a mix of lecture and socratic methods) in
which the students help me deliver the lecture. And even on these
lecture-heavy days, I stop the PowerPoint clicking about every 15
for a brief in-class activity.
I base this on the "Rotary Rule" for after-dinner speeches: few can
hold a train of thought for more than 15 minutes.
EQUITY BENEFITS: PowerPoint as a lecture organizer possibly
has certain equity benefits for a course presented to multiple class
sections. The University of Texas management department found
much less section-to-section grade variances in PowerPoint based
courses than in traditional lecture-based course. I admit that
causal connections must still be explored on this finding, but the
implications are interesting.
Any thoughts, Dr. G?
JPO
-----------------
John P. Orr, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Management
School of Business
Cameron University
Lawton, OK 73505-6377
PHONE: 580-581-2367