ELECTRIC NEWS
New study: That PowerPoint presentation is... POINTLESS
April 21, 2007
BUSINESSES regard it as an important tool to sell a product or get
a point across.
Schools use it in presentations and some churches even use it to
promote their activities.
These days, PowerPoint, the Microsoft program for PCs, seems to be
everywhere.
It allows a presentation to be designed in a series of slides which
are beamed onto a screen for the speaker to use as a visual
aid.
It is so popular that there are even PowerPoint presentations on
how to do a PowerPoint presentation, reports the Telegraph.
But is it really the all-powerful tool it is often made out to be?
Not at all, some would argue.
CHARTS AND SLOGANS
In fact, a new study claims that many who sit through PowerPoint
presentations end up bored when faced with a seemingly endless
stream of mission statements, charts, slogans, messages in capital
letters for emphasis, and proposals given in bullet points.
The common scenario is that the speaker, often an executive or
trainer, merely repeats the words on the slides so the audience
gets the information twice.
FIZZLES OUT
And what starts out flashy at the beginning soon fizzles out.
And that, according to researchers at the University of New South
Wales in Australia, is because the human brain cannot cope with
processing information coming from a screen and a voice at the same
time.
That kind of repetition makes the brain switch off,
A speech would be far less of a waste of time, the research
claims.
The study concludes that PowerPoint presentations have little power
and even less point.
It branded PowerPoint presentations a disaster and called for them
to be scrapped.
According to Prof John Sweller, who headed the study team, there is
a scientific explanation for a room full of PowerPoint viewers
yawning and looking at their watches after a couple of
minutes.
He said: 'If you have ever wondered why your eyes start glazing
over as you read those dot points on the screen, at the same time
words are being spoken, it is because it is difficult to process
information if it is coming in the written and spoken form at the
same time.'
PowerPoint is a Microsoft program for PCs. Prof Sweller said notes
should not be read aloud from a display.
Doing so does not double the chances of the message getting across,
he said.
He added: 'The use of the PowerPoint presentation has been a
disaster. It should be ditched. It is effective to speak to a
diagram, because it presents information in a different form.
TOO MUCH LOAD
'But it is not effective to speak the same words that are written,
because it is putting too much load on the mind and decreases your
ability to understand what is being presented.
'PowerPoint can backfire if the information on the screen is the
same as that which is verbalised because the audience's attention
will be split between the two.'
But MrChris Rothwell of Microsoft Corporation, said: 'We believe
that PowerPoint remains a very powerful tool that can add impact
and variety, but it is no substitute for being a good
communicator.'
Anyone care to speak off the cuff then?
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The use of the PowerPoint presentation has been a disaster. It
should be ditched. It is not effective to speak the same words that
are written...
- Prof John Sweller, who headed the research team
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WHAT THE STUDY CLAIMS
The audience sits through a stream of mission statements, charts,
slogans and proposals while a speaker repeats the words on the
slides.
The audience gets bored and 'switches off'.