From: Ken Friedman [mailto:
ken.friedman@bi.no]
Friends,
The many responses on Power Point issues has been most interesting. I
agree with much of what was written. I started to jot down a few
notes. By the time I finished considering the wealth of ideas
implicit in the thread, this became a long post, perhaps an essay.
This essay will demonstrate a method of teaching and learning that
does not benefit from Power Point. The demonstration of this method
will frame the issue in a larger series of issues. I hope it makes my
skepticism to Power Point understandable.
My earlier post focused specifically on the deficiencies of Power
Point as an educational tool for developing thinking skills -
analysis, logic, and rhetoric. Power Point has uses. I argue that
these uses are limited and specific.
Power Point must be used with care as an _ educational -_ tool. Some
courses may benefit from Power Point. Many courses do not. Some
courses are adversely affected by its use.
Every spring, I teach organization and leadership to a large cohort
of first-year students. The cohort varies between 180 and 200
students. One purpose of this course is helping students to develop
basic thinking, research, and writing skills. The other goal is
helping students to understand organization and leadership.
To understand organization and leadership at a deep level requires
developing analytical perspective and broad judgment. Course issues
must be considered in the broad context of business in society. Since
most issues in organization and leadership affect human lives, nearly
all leadership decisions involve ethical issues. To work with this
range of issues requires understanding and insight beyond the obvious
subject matter.
We help our students to develop philosophical and ethical sensitivity
to the profound issues at the core of organization and leadership.
Rather than simply presenting facts in a stream of unidirectional
information, we ask students to gain a broad overview of information
and a sense of how to put the information to work. This requires the
ability to gather information on their own, to compare and contrast
ideas, and to reflect on what these ideas mean. We therefore ask
students to learn basic thinking and research skills. We emphasize
analysis, logic, and rhetoric throughout the course.
John Houseman's crusty character in "The Paper Chase" summarized this
approach as teaching students to think so that they can teach
themselves a subject. This is not at all the same as abandoning the
responsibility of teaching. It involves introducing students to a
rich combination of subject issues and skills while guiding them
through a process that enables them to answers questions ands solve
problems for themselves.
Our primary teaching media are classroom discussion and dialogue.
These are punctuated by appropriate mini-lectures and supported by
skills development assignments. Our most important teaching tool is a
term paper.
Students get the term paper at the beginning of the semester. The
paper involves (1) a case study, (2) an essay on good leadership, and
(3) an annotated bibliography on a topic of choice drawn from any
subject in the textbook. Our text is Richard L Daft's Organization
Theory and Design.
Since students get the project at the beginning of the semester, they
have a full semester to work. This allows a rich editorial cycle of
drafts, comments, queries, response, and revised drafts. Many
students take full advantage of the full cycle. Others do not, but
the opportunity is there.
Students are free at any time to enquire about any issue in the
course or the term paper. Students may raise questions in class. They
are also invited to meet during office hours, call, or email. They
are even invited to telephone at home if they need help in the
evenings or on weekends. Few students take up the offer to call at
home. Nevertheless, willing availability demonstrates personal
commitment to the importance of student work.
A large teaching assistant group selected from the best students in
past years supports the course. Each TA works with students on
assignments. They manage student discussion groups on course issues.
They work with students on the term paper. The goal is rich dialogue
and feedback on student progress. We do not do students' work for
them. We show them how to work more effectively, and we help them
learn how to develop the resources they need for better work.
The core process in this course is dialogue and individual
development. Our goal is helping students develop a broad perspective
based on intelligent, wide-ranging use of sources. Students
substantiate work with solid use of theory linked to good empirical
data. The best go beyond course books and resources to the sources on
which curriculum materials are based and some develop or discover new
material.
The intense focus on dialogue and process makes lectures irrelevant.
Since Power Point supports lectures, I have little need for Power
Point as a teaching tool.
As a learning tool, Power Point has no pedagogical purpose for
students learning basic research and thinking skills.
It may have significant value in such courses as corporate
communication or presentation skills. This is not such a course.
I agreed with some of the comments on potential virtues of Power Point.
Charlie Wankel pointed out "life is theatre and certainly teaching as
a profession requires showpersonship." He writes, "how you say what
you are saying becomes what you are saying in many ways." He draws
two conclusions. Teachers rarely exploit the full power of Power
Point to support their presentations. Students who learn to use Power
Point well do better in business than those who do not.
Teachers who exploit the full power of media can make good use of
Power Point for lecture presentations. It is certainly helpful for
courses in which student present. There may be problems in using
Power Point for other kinds of courses.
Most of us agree on the importance of multiple forms of learning.
Nevertheless, the vast majority of university teachers still rely on
lectures for most classroom work.
We are used to lecturing. The lectures format enables us to control
content, context, and style in a professional way. For lectures,
Power Point has its uses. Since I use dialogue and seminar classes,
Power Point has little use.
The biggest problem in lecturing with Power Point is that Power Point
exacerbates the unidirectional lecture. It further reduces the
opportunity for exchange and interaction.
Dialogue teaching depends on interaction and the slow, often
difficult development that leads a student toward intellectual
independence. Dialogue teaching is responsive and interactive.
Because it is situated, it requires frequent change and adaptation.
It is always imperfect for exactly this reason. We frequently
redesign the course in response to student needs, and just as often,
we discover the changes we made in response to the class psychology
of one cohort must be revised yet again to meet the needs of the
next. Even so, this method of teaching inculcates habits of mind and
character essential to student development.
This course is part of a four-year integrated master's program. I
designed the course in response to problems I noted in master's
candidates during my first year of teaching at the school. The most
important validation for this course becomes visible long after the
course is done. We saw it first in the increased abilities of
students as they moved up through the subsequent years of the
sequence. Most important, we noticed a dramatic jump in the quality
of master's theses when the first cohort to take this course finished
their studies.
Many comments in this thread make perfect sense. Mitchell Adrian
notes the use of Power Point to help students remember material more
easily. Ruth Axelrod's notes that learning to use presentation tools
effectively helps in learning to organize thoughts. Ruth, Steve
Harper, and others write that Power Point is not the problem, but the
way in which it is or is not used.
Conna Condon and J-M. Guillemette note that Power Point affords
specific advantages that other media do not.
Jack Ring argues that we should teach students to use many media.
That students will benefit from knowing how to use many media is
sensible. In discussing the content and topics of education, however,
Jack adds, "Ken's points are well taken but do not address how to get
these topics into a stream of educement that works best."
It is my view that I did address this issue.
Analysis, logic, and rhetoric offer a superb foundation for
educational development, but six common factors limit their use in
dialogue teaching and interactive teaching.
First, dialogue teaching and interactive teaching are intense and
demanding. Dialogue teaching requires philosophical sophistication in
sorting out the threads of different problems in any specific
learning situation to identify and articulate the issues that
students face without solving problems for them. It also requires
pedagogical sensitivity in selecting appropriate moments for
development interaction.
Second, personal factors limit dialogue teaching. Not everyone likes
the work dialogue teaching requires. Not everyone CAN teach this way.
Many researchers with comprehensive mastery of their subject field
lack the philosophical and interpersonal skills on which dialogue
teaching is based.
For most university teachers, a number of factors combine. On the
personal level, many teachers models their teaching on the teaching
of their own professors. This generally means commitment to a
tradition of lecturing that has been embedded in university life for
the past eight centuries. This frequently involves personal
discomfort with a dialogue style. The need to accept student
questions as the central focus of learning is a profound reversal on
the traditional concept of teacher knowledge as the focus of learning.
Dialogue teaching can be compared to servant leadership. What we know
remains important as the scientific and scholarly core of our
teaching. Knowing when and how to impart what we know is the art of
teaching. It is through the skilled application of the art that we
enable students to learn. As they learn, they master the scientific
and scholarly content of the course.
This approach requires a radical reconceptualization of the teaching
mission. It simply is not suitable for everyone.
Third, the intersection of personal factors with institutional
requirements limits both time and opportunity for dialogue teaching.
Most of us are committed to research. Some of us actively prefer
research to teaching. Nearly all of us are faced with a pressure for
good publishing. Many researchers ARE hooked on teaching (Andre and
Frost 1997). Those who find ways to build on the synergies of
research and teaching gain results in both areas. This is not a
majority. Worse, yet, institutional policies that set abstract
parameters for research and teaching sometimes make a sophisticated
balance impossible. As a result, time invested in publishing
generally yields a better dividend than time invested in teaching.
One reason that lecturing is the world's most widely used teaching
method is that lecturing most closely parallels the article and
research monograph. A scholar presents what he or she knows. Students
learn what they can as the knowledge flows by.
Another reason is that the time we spend in developing research
material can be optimized when we structure our teaching to present
what we know.
An empirical investigation by Clow and Wachter (1996) revealed that
lecturing is increasingly preferred as teachers rise in faculty rank,
deepen their expertise, and have increasingly large amounts of
knowledge to teach. Lecturing does not facilitate learning. It does
make teaching easier.
Fourth, dialogue teaching generally requires small group settings and
face-to-face encounters. For a large class such as the organization
and leadership course, the workload rises dramatically. Those who
also use email and rich contact to coach for development find the
load far greater than a lecture course.
Fifth, dialogue teaching sometimes involves a problem in the
philosophy of curriculum development. Many who believe that dialogue
teaching is the best method for intense learning argue that it is a
waste of resources in large university courses. They believe that
this kind of teaching is best suited to upper division seminars and
graduate teaching. They recognize the importance of analysis, logic,
and rhetoric for the development of thinking skills, but they do not
accept the necessity of these skills for undergraduate students at
the start of their education.
Some teachers argue that students ought to spend the first few years
at university loading up on facts, after which they can begin to
think. Some even argue that students have nothing to think about
until have accumulated a stock of facts. This overlooks the rich body
of fact and experience that every student brings. However spotty or
diffuse that stock of facts may be, it is a starting point.
Nevertheless, the learning that is anchored to earlier learning goes
deeper and holds longer than an entirely new body of knowledge.
Teaching that tailors subject matter to each cohort and - when
possible - to each student yields far better learning results. Even
so, many teachers disagree with this idea on principle.
Sixth are factors that touch on many issues. These are budgeting and
class size. These factors conspire to limit the use of dialogue and
seminar teaching for those who are unwilling to make a demanding
personal investment that is often unpaid.
These six factors limit dialogue teaching while offering rewards for
good presentation.
To educate - to educe learning - requires drawing the student out. To
educe effectively requires interaction as contrasted with
presentation. Lecturing does not draw out. Lecturing does not guide.
Neither does teaching skillful media use teach thinking skills.
Jack writes, "We are dealing with a generation that has spent 6000
hours each on MTV and on color, animated, audio'd video games . . .
Next year is 3D video games and DIY movie editing on your Mac."
This is true and this fact actually constitutes a problem.
Our students have spent much of their lives absorbing information
without thinking critically about what that information means. Many
transform part of this information into personal knowledge, but most
of this is the tacit knowledge used to play games, drive cars, or fly
jets. It is not the articulate knowledge required of an educated
citizen or a skilled manager. This heavy load of absorbed information
generally has nothing to do with ethical sensitivity or emotional
intelligence.
Edutainment poses three challenges.
The first is shaping thinking skills in an environment that often
works against thought. The second is distinguishing between education
and training. The third is a willingness to face the frustration and
difficulty of converting students from intergalactic fighter pilots
to thoughtful students and future managers.
Learning to think critically, to analyze ideas and issues, and to
express them effective is central to these three challenges.
This is not a journal, and this already a long post. While these
views are based on empirical evidence and rich theory, I will not
offer a comprehensive argument.
This is NOT an argument against skillful presentation. The argument
here is more sophisticated.
The argument is that skilled thinkers have the mature and reflective
capacity to make best use of presentations. Until students learn to
think critically, they cannot deal effectively with information. They
sometimes absorb information. More often, they watch passively as it
flows past.
Until students learn how to engage information effectively, good
presentations mislead far more often than they educate. They mislead
because it is easy to confuse the transient understanding of
well-articulated material with anchored individual understanding.
When students watch us structure information into knowledge, it looks
easy. Until they face the challenge of working with information to
create knowledge, it is easy to confuse the momentary understanding
of an observer with the integrated understanding of an active
thinker. This is why effective presentation misleads more often than
it educates.
Only a mature student can make good use of lectures. As an educator
who works with experienced managers, Jack may not be sufficiently
attentive to the difference between kinds of students.
Too few educators realize the difficulty of helping even mature
students to make use of presented information. Managers attend
courses and seminars that inspire, challenge, and excite. The market
for executive education courses and seminars is huge. So is the
parallel market for management speakers, executive presenters,
"motivational" courses, and the rest.
The problem is that most of what students absorb in the passive
experience of presentations does not stick. A significant portion of
what does stick is not transformed into the situated knowledge that
enables wise choices and effective action.
I develop my approach to teaching within this context. I am concerned
with the foundations of learning, and that was the essence of my post.
This is the point that Edryce Reynolds makes where she writes,
"PowerPoint has its uses, but it cannot take the place of a
teacher/facilitator who knows how to get the students to take charge
of their own learning."
Two specific questions deserve answers. William Weech proposes a
two-by-two matrix of learning facilitation and Power Point. He asks,
"Does anyone disagree that all four of these possibilities exist in
the real world?"
William raises a valid point, but his position in the U. S. State
Department suggests that he is a professional presenter who works
with mature professional students.
He notes an option outside the two-by-two matrix, "'does not use
PowerPoint at all.' I would just like to suggest," he writes, "that
if you belong to that crowd, you needn't throw stones at those of use
who are trying to get to quadrant two (good facilitation PLUS
effective visual aids)."
I am not throwing stones. I am raising serious pedagogical issues on
management education and development. My concern involves the overuse
and abuse of technical media in an environment where our fundamental
challenge is the development of thinking skills.
More than this, I challenge the idea that strong presentation skills
are as effective as we believe them to be for _ teaching _ and _
learning _.
Consider accounts of effective and inspiring teachers. Presentation
skills are rarely mentioned. Examples of philosophical sophistication
and pedagogical sensitivity are.
This is not merely anecdotal, though. There is a robust literature on
the process and effect of learning.
Power Point does have its uses. My concern involves knowing and
applying the REST of what we ought to know as management educators.
One concern is that attention to Power Point and other media often
obscures fundamental issues. Another is that ostensibly effective use
of media replaces and works against genuine learning.
This is the tendency of edutainment to replace education. Edutainment
often replaces education on television and in the press. If this
happens in the legitimate gray zone between entertainment and
education, it may be a virtue. Accurate and entertaining programs on
social science, history, and natural science are social goods. They
do not educate in a comprehensive and serious way. They are not meant
to do so. They may well shape an interest in facts and an audience
for learning, though, and they do no harm.
When edutainment replaces education in the classroom and management
seminar, it is a problem.
Dan Eveleth asks, "Powerpoint is better than glue and not as good as
books? Is it proper for us to rate the usefulness of our tools
without a context or setting to go with the ratings?"
We should provide a context for our ratings. I did. The original post
considered Power Point as, "an educational tool for the development
of thinking skills." I did not discuss Power Point for presentation,
or business. I discussed it as an educational tool for the
development of THINKING skills. In the specific context of education
for thinking skills, it does run "ahead of glue and construction
paper and way behind books and dialogue."
Perhaps I was wrong, though. At certain points in the educational
process, glue and construction paper form direct, interactive media
that render them more useful for conceptual development than Power
Point. When students use Power Point to _ present _ the products of
their thought, it may also help to develop thinking skills. This
presumes much work first, and for this work, books, documents, and
dialogue remain the best tool.
Jay Warner quoting Tufte summarizes the common thread running through
all these notes neatly: "the information to ink ratio should be high."
Students like to be entertained. When we can entertain them whole
increasing learning, we should. This is not always possible.
Many students find the course in organization and leadership
frustrating, difficult and - at times - irritating. Most of these
students change their minds on the value of the course when they
finish their term paper. Then they are delighted to dicer how much
they have learned. They are even happier to realize that they now
posses important skills that enable them to learn on their own. By
the time they enter the second year, many students who complained
about the course tell the incoming cohort of first-year students that
this course will be an exciting learning experience.
These first-year students look forward to the course until it starts.
Then they find it frustrating, difficult and - at times - irritating
They continue to be annoyed until they discover in their turn just
how much they learn in a course that stresses analysis, logic, and
rhetoric.
We educe analysis, logic, and rhetorical skill through dialogue and
interaction. For fundamental educational development, Power Point is
simply beside the point.
Best regards,
Ken Friedman
References
Andre, Rae, and Peter J. Frost. 1997. Researchers hooked on teaching.
Noted scholars discuss the synergies of teaching and research.
Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Clow, Kenneth E., and Mary Kay Wachter. 1996. "Teaching methodologies
used in basic marketing. An empirical investigation." Journal of
Marketing Education, Vol. 18, Spring, 48-59.
--
Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Knowledge Management
Norwegian School of Management
School
+47 22.98.50.00 Telephone
+47 22.98.51.11 Telefax
Home office
+46 (46) 53.245 Telephone
+46 (46) 53.345 Telefax
email:
ken.friedman@bi.no