A recent survey revealed that PowerPoint Presentations in classrooms leave students bored and uninterested. These presentations or lectures are no way useful to students in the current scenario, confirms the survey. Many students expressed that universities should ban PowerPoint. Universities should always measure success with student satisfaction rather than measuring success by how much their students learn, opined the students.
Demerits of PowerPoint-Based Teaching
The survey pointed out three major demerits of PowerPoint-based teaching –
- In most cases, PowerPoint-based teaching discourages complex thinking . PowerPoint slides motivate instructors to teach complex topics in a simple manner by using bullet points, oversimplified tables, abstract figures, and slogans. Usually, such activities discourage deep analysis of the topic, and students mostly rely on bullet points and others as the medium of learning. Here, students do not show interest to dig the topic more for better understanding.
- The teaching process of most courses is based on PowerPoint presentations and slides. Therefore, most students treat a course merely as a PowerPoint presentation or slides. In most cases, teachers are unable to explain the concept clearly due to PowerPoint slides. They often fail to provide proper notes to students.
- PowerPoint-based teaching has gradually discouraged students to visit libraries and refer to books. Instead, many students search for PowerPoint presentations on different topics available on the internet.
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Apart from the demerits mentioned above, PowerPoint-based teaching and learning have its own merits. Some topics may be vast, and it becomes difficult to rely on reference books. In such cases, PowerPoint slides are the only source that enables students to absorb at least gist of the topic. On the other hand, PowerPoint is an easy way of teaching and learning.
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With inputs from Business Insider