Walking into Professor Sandra Horvath-Peterson’s classroom, you won’t see anything unusual. Some students pull out notebooks and rifle through pages, while others remain engrossed in lunch conversations. Standing by the podium, Horvath-Peterson chats easily with her students, who are quickly filling up the large ICC classroom. You hardly notice the screen lowered in the front of the room. With the lights on, it blends naturally into its surroundings.
When Horvath-Peterson turns off the lights in the front of the room, however, the classroom changes. Its focal point becomes a large, blue PowerPoint slide projected on a screen at the front of the classroom. The slide bears the day’s outline in simple, yellow letters. It’s a little too big for the wide-but-short room, and the bright blue placed starkly against the dimly lit blackboard is a bit abrasive. But you can’t help looking at it. In that moment just after the lights go out, the screen dominates the classroom.
Classrooms like Horvath-Peterson’s, already familiar to most Georgetown students, are only becoming more common throughout the country. Since its creation in 1987, Microsoft’s PowerPoint presentation software has developed into an essential tool for business leaders. Few conferences are completely free of PowerPoint slides, PowerPoint newsgroups populate the Internet and many companies now require their employees to use PowerPoint in presentations. Once a glorified slide projector, this software has taken on its own character-and its own controversies.
PowerPoint’s latest destination seems to be the classroom. More and more teachers from elementary schools to universities are abandoning blackboards for computer screens, or using a combination of the two. But even as many professors are enthusiastically adding PowerPoint to their toolbox, some wonder whether it belongs there at all.
“It’s only a little better than teaching children to smoke cigarettes,” said analytical design expert Edward Tufte about PowerPoint in the classroom. Tufte says PowerPoint’s low-resolution and bullet-point style make the presentation of complex concepts impossible. Lecturers try to compensate for the thin, oversimplified content with animations and tricks, a phenomenon labeled “PowerPointlessness” by Jamie McKenzie, the editor of From Now On: The Education Technology Journal.
But Tufte and McKenzie say that bright colors, music, and animations fail to disguise what Tufte calls a “poverty of content.”
“A vicious circle results,” Tufte said. “Thin content leads to boring presentations. To make them unboring, PowerPoint Phluff [extraneous elements such as animations] is added, damaging the content, making the presentations even more boring.”
But Tufte and McKenzie’s criticisms of PowerPoint are not restricted to its many extraneous features, however. Tufte says the limitations of the software are so severe that it can never be used in a positive way. In his essay The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, he reviews the flaws that inherently doom PowerPoint users to failure.
Vague, broad ideas forced into artificial hierarchies characterize virtually all PowerPoint presentations, according to Tufte. Because slides projected onto a wall or screen are of such low resolution, he argues, each slide can only hold a few words. It is simply an issue of space: Complex statements do not fit on a PowerPoint slide.
The lack of space also forces the viewer to see data or graphs in a sequence, rather than all at once. It is much easier to analyze two graphs drawn side-by-side on a blackboard than two graphs that can only be viewed one at a time, Tufte says. For this reason PowerPoint does not effectively communicate important information.
Moreover, the bullet style of PowerPoint forces complex ideas into short “catch phrases,” Tufte says. And bulleted lists can imply causality where it does not exist. When three items are in a list, the relationship between those three items is unclear – does one cause another? Do they happen simultaneously? “Bullet outlines might be useful in presentations now and then, but sentences with subjects and verbs are usually better,” Tufte wrote in his essay.
McKenzie adds that PowerPoint encourages a linear progression of ideas, which denies students the challenge of reasoning. “It’s the difference between pedagogy, when the professor has all the answers and the students ask all the questions, and androgogy-that’s a fancy word for adult education,” he said.
PowerPoint is not necessarily evil, McKenzie says. Indeed, when he gives lectures, he almost always uses it. But he only uses cluster charts, which he says force both the presenter and the audience to become more engaged in the material. The linear argument that PowerPoint most easily presents is not appropriate in any kind of educational setting.
Tufte is more resolute. His advice is to stick to using PowerPoint for traditional slides only. “Use [PowerPoint] as a projector for showing low-resolution color images, graphics, and videos that cannot be reproduced as printed handouts at a presentation,” he wrote. Graphs, data tables, and outlines should be printed on paper handouts, which display information much more quickly and effectively.
Many professors at Georgetown disagree. “It was the way I’d always dreamed of teaching history, to make history come alive,” said Horvath-Peterson, almost glowing as she remembered her first experience with PowerPoint three years ago.
Economics Professor Arik Levinson has been using PowerPoint in his lectures for nearly seven years. A straightforward and well-organized conversationalist, he identified three major advantages of PowerPoint.
He praised the scale PowerPoint provides: It’s just bigger. Levinson teaches his Economics 001 class in a lecture hall that seats more than 200. “It’s visually clearer,” he said. This may explain why, according to Levinson’s estimates, 75 percent of the Economics professors use PowerPoint in big lectures.
Secondly, images, videos, graphs and charts are all easily integrated into a PowerPoint lecture, Levinson said. With his slides posted online, he said, students don’t have to spend time copying down complicated graphs or risk getting it wrong.
And it’s not just the students who benefit from the accuracy of PowerPoint. Carol Rogers, one of Levinson’s colleagues in the Economics Department, noted that the software improves the quality of her visuals. “When I draw the graphs electronically, I get them exactly right,” she said.
In history classes, PowerPoint can bring maps, pictures and primary sources to the students. Although History Professor Amy Leonard is an energetic and animated woman, she said she can’t stand up in front of the classroom reading lengthy quotations without losing students. PowerPoint, she said, allows her to bring these excerpts to class and attach them to a picture so that the students will remember. “It’s not a bullet point,” she said pointedly.
No matter how interesting a class might be, the attention of overworked, under-rested students is often hard to keep,. PowerPoint’s many features are one defense. “It’s an alternative to asking the class to jump up and stretch,” Horvath-Peterson said.
Rogers noted that PowerPoint features can be used to direct students’ attention to specific points. “You can use sound with a curve, and it’s a signal to students that something’s going on,” she said. Now, Rogers says she feels more students are paying attention at any given time.
Indeed, the visual aspect of PowerPoint seems to be its most significant pull. Languages and the arts seem to have remained mostly PowerPoint-free, according to John Steitz, who works in Classroom Education Technology Services. But in disciplines involving charts, graphs, and pictures, PowerPoint serves a natural purpose. For Biochemistry professor Anne Rosenwald the decision was simple. “PowerPoint is very similar to showing slides, which is how scientific data is presented,” she said.
Levinson had one final sentiment, one that would be echoed by all. “I don’t get chalk dust all over my hands,” he said with a smile, throwing up his quite clean hands in a shrug.
Of course, not all professors have jumped on the PowerPoint bandwagon. “For several thousand years there have been successful teachers and they seemed to get along fine without PowerPoint,” said Tufte.
Economics Professor Marius Schwartz is one of those teachers. He says that writing out derivations and forcing students to take them down are an essential part of teaching process. “If you just present a done deal, the students don’t learn as much,” he said.
Schwartz says PowerPoint is not inherently flawed, but its features present a temptation to fall into a memorized, accelerated lecture that is simply too great. “When I lecture from an overhead, I tend to be less spontaneous,” he said.
Even professors who use PowerPoint realize this danger. “PowerPoint is extremely problematic,” said Leonard. She says that when the screen is in the center of the room, it can take the focus away from the professor. “Lecturing is essentially about the professor,” she said. But she says that she is able to recapture the students’ attention with a little charisma. Rogers agrees. “It’s not like when you have slides you push a button and the whole lecture runs itself,” she said.
Even Schwartz acknowledges that PowerPoint has advantages for those who know how to use it. “Different styles fit different people,” he said. “There’s no one size fits all.” At this university, however, PowerPoint seems to fit quite a few.
When these glowing reviews were brought to Tufte, he was unfazed. He reiterated his conviction that PowerPoint negates its own purpose. “Teaching is about communication, and we want communication to be as clear, precise, and high resolution as possible,” he said. “PowerPoint so drastically limits and stylizes information that in many situations it is harmful.”
But if PowerPoint is so harmful, why do professors continue to use it year after year? “PowerPoint is presenter-oriented. It serves the convenience of the teacher,” Tufte said. Certainly, many professors say PowerPoint makes their lives simpler.
“If find it more convenient, easy to give copies to the students, easy to make changes in subsequent years,” said Management Professor Bonnie Montano. Levinson says he even enjoys it. “I definitely have fun playing with the technology,” he said. “But I’m a gadget guy.”
However, this view is not shared by all. Horvath-Peterson recalled the difficulty she had in using the technology when she first started with it; she had to turn to her teenage daughters for help. Sociology Professor Margaret Hall says that after two years, it’s still hard. Leonard said that designing the slides took at least two additional hours per lecture-and she’s one of the technologically savvy. Still, most professors say the advantages are worth the extra time.
Still, Tufte denies that these advantages exist. “They may be confusing their ability to can their material with imagining somehow their method of teaching has improved,” he said of the professors.
But what about students? Professors who use the software say class evaluations show a generally positive response. And those in Horvath-Peterson’s class seem to like her slides. “It’s better than having her write on the board,” said Julie Marlow (CAS ‘06). Sarah Vander Woody (CAS ‘06) adds that she likes having the outline to organize her notes and see where the professor is going.
McKenzie says that many students like PowerPoint because it’s easy. “PowerPoint can be attractive because it’s a form of spoon-feeding,” he said. “Some students do like spoon-feeding. There’s an efficiency to it.”
That doesn’t justify its use to him. “We would hope to set higher standards at great universities like Georgetown,” he said. He proposed that in the modern, fast-paced world it is important for students to develop a “tolerance for ambiguity,” or even an “appetite for ambiguity.” In the real world, he says, students will have to work things out on their own.
Tufte and McKenzie’s criticisms are not going unheard, however. With the creation of the Center for New Design in Learning and Scholarship three years ago, the University has designated a place for technology in the future. But that technology will not necessarily include PowerPoint.
“I’d like to think that we’re leading the teaching and learning charge, and technology has a place in that,” said CNDLS Executive Director Randall Bass. Bass is also a professor in the English Department.
But Bass’s vision extends beyond PowerPoint. While University Information Systems offers classes in how to use it, Bass says the University does not encourage it. ” I would never talk about PowerPoint as a technology that encourages active learning,” he said. “The faculty discovered and use PowerPoint on their own.”
Bass says that integrating websites, videos, and discussion forums into classrooms has much more potential to make students active participants in the classroom. When he teaches, he says, he uses software called Blackboard, which is available to all professors and students at Georgetown. Blackboard allows the professors to post assignments and documents on the web; students can respond in discussion forums. Bass uses Blackboard to look at comments students have posted in class, directly involving the students in the lecture.
Since 2000, Bass says that Georgetown has come a long way in learning to use technology. “We’re starting to see a community of faculty that are pretty engaged in thinking about new ways of learning,” he said. Only a few professors have fundamentally changed their teaching style, but Bass says the foundation has been laid for technology to become an important part of the Georgetown classroom.
CNDLS has a vision that is directing the university, but Classroom Education Technology Services is in charge of implementing it. CETS is already extremely active. John Steitz, the Senior Technology Zone Manager for St. Mary’s Hall, was not near the end of his day when he stopped for a late lunch in CETS’s small ICC office. The office was busy for the late afternoon, with employees still going in and out. A bulletin board containing the tasks left for the day was still almost half full, and a “current problems” white board announced a glitch in the St. Mary’s network. The CETS workers have to communicate by white board and walkie-talkie, because they’re rarely in the office at the same time.
Steitz walked through an office bursting with boxes, files, and portable electronic devices to a small conference room. After removing his coat-he had been working in St. Mary’s-he sat down, exhaled, and pulled out his sandwich and a cupcake. “I’m sorry but I have to eat,” he said.
Steitz was busy all day setting up classroom technology. In St. Mary’s, he estimates that 80 percent of professors use computers, and of those 80 percent use PowerPoint specifically. But of the 160 locations CETS serves on campus, only 50 house built-in technology. This leaves CETS workers to cart portable computers and projectors all over campus.
During the last month of the semester, when students are giving final presentation, CETS is already shorthanded. So many students are scrambling to get a hold of presentation equipment that Steitz calls it the period of “PowerPoint and the Seven Dwarfs.” At these times, he says, they are first come, first serve. “In April, we will be down to our last projector,” he said. “We literally have to turn people down.”
And the problem is only getting worse. Steitz says that technology use increases by 15 percent every year. “It’s growing among the faculty for the simple reason that any person who has gotten their Ph.D. in the last 20 years had to use technology for research,” Steitz said.
But capacity is not keeping up with the growth in demand for technology. Most “renovations” the University performs are actually deferred maintenance, Steitz says, and even those renovations are slowing. Right now, classroom technology is funded mainly by targeted donations. “The next step the University needs to take is to remove classroom technology from targeted fundraising and make it a regular operating expense on the budget,” he said. But he understands the difficulty. The University recognizes the problem, he says, but they simply don’t have the money to fix it.
As long as the University is cash-poor, and CNDLS is working to educate professors about stimulating teaching, Tufte and McKenzie may get their wish. But rapidly growing demand among faculty suggests that PowerPoint will not stay out of the classroom for long. Horvath-Peterson, for one, won’t be getting rid of her PowerPoint slides anytime soon. They seem to be working pretty well.
When Horvath-Peterson turns off the lights the screen dominates the room. But only for a moment. As students’ eyes adjust to the dim light, they turn back to the professor, even though they can hardly see her. The diligent students still sit in the front of the classroom, even if it’s not as well lit, and those in the back are still yawning and staring off into space. But Horvath-Peterson remains in control of her classroom, seamlessly integrating her slides into her lecture, and never breaking her narrative flow. PowerPoint allows a short visit from Napoleon, but this is still her classroom.
