The Third Party in a Classroom
I have had a few great teachers in my life. I remember them really well— twirling through the classroom, throwing not only their arms but their whole bodies around as they try to get a point across, making faces, scribbling crazy sketches on the board. Attending their lectures was like attending a theater performance, and they had quite a similar effect — full immersion into the scene that gets imprinted onto your brain and lingers there for at least a few days, months, years, if not forever.
As I got older, new technology emerged, creeping into every sphere of our lives. That is when people for some reason decided that just a teacher in a classroom was no longer enough, that we as students could benefit from the new technology and enjoy more engaging learning experience. That is how the third party appeared in our classrooms, the silent presence that yet demands attention — PowerPoint presentations.
I am not saying PowerPoints are always bad. Neither does the research. A 2014 study published in Procedia, social and behavioral sciences journal, along with numerous other studies found that using slide presentations in class motivates students to learn and helps them perceive the material better. However, this only happens when PowerPoints are used rationally. The problem is, far not every instructor knows or has ever been taught how to use PowerPoints effectively. That is how millions of students around the world ended up with glowing ghosts of projected slides stealing the class scene in front of them.
“Students are learners, not spectators”, claims the University of Notre Dame in their article on better use of presentation software. It suggests presenting relevant illustrations of the material on the slides, such as charts, diagrams, artwork, and quotes, but not an outline of the lecture itself. Slide presentations should not substitute the teacher, but rather serve as additional media to help students comprehend the material. First, PowerPoints must provide key words, concepts, and images and, second, they should never simply contain lecturer’s notes from which he or she would read to the class. These are the top two mistakes as identified in Teaching with PowerPoint guide by Northern Illinois University and, unfortunately, from my experience and that of my fellow students, this is exactly how most instructors use or, rather, misuse PowerPoints.
Why are inadequate PowerPoints so distracting and damaging to the learning process? What allows us to learn is focused attention. That is, concentration on one activity or one stimulus for a period of time. This concentration is proven to happen easier when we are interested in the subject, and when there are no other distracting stimuli. Exactly what the “old-school” teaching method was all about! Of course, not all teachers are exciting and interesting, and not all students are eager to study all their subjects, but in case a teacher does kindle students’ interest, in an “old school” there would be no third party to disrupt anyone’s attention. Today, a poorly designed PowerPoint is often one.
What we forget today is that a good teacher is good enough without a slide presentation. Interesting material is interesting without a package of flashy pictures and fancy animations. A mental and emotional connection between an eager teacher and a keen student is the channel through which knowledge is being passed from one to the other. If a teacher needs to illustrate his or her point, he or she will direct a student’s attention to a PowerPoint for a moment and then turn it back to themself. However, if they rely entirely on the presentation that is glowing up there through the whole lecture, the precious connection is disrupted. How rarely these days can we devote our full and undivided attention to one thing? So why should there be any attention stealers in a classroom of the era in which full attention is the greatest gift one person can give to another?
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Polina Isakova is a fourth year journalism student at the American University in Bulgaria. Having both learning and teaching background, she values emotional connection between a student and a teacher as an integral part of learning.
