“One of the first things [Steve] Jobs did during the product review process was ban PowerPoints. `I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking,’ Jobs later recalled. `People would confront a problem by creating a presentation. I wanted them to engage, to has things out at the table, rather than show a bunch of slides. People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.’”

– Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 337.

– Curt (at edwardtufte.com), October 26, 2011

See: http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001yB&topic_id=1

“All of the complexity of the Afghan conflict — and all of the bureaucracy NATO used to manage the counterinsurgency effort — was summed up by a single spaghetti monster of a PowerPoint slide. ‘When we understand [it],” war commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal joked when he saw the slide, “we’ll have won the war.’ “

Please read more here.

Pentagon’s Craziest PowerPoint Slide Revealed
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/09/revealed-pentagons-craziest-powerpoint-slide-ever/

The study considered groups of university students with and without handouts and compared their performances.

“The key finding is that having handouts in the lecture versus only receiving them at the review stage made no difference to test performance. Although the students who had the handouts in-lecture made fewer notes, this didn’t affect to harm their test performance at either the 12-minute or 1-week delay.”

Further:
“A follow-up study with 34 students was identical to the first but the testing only took place 12-minutes after the lectures and this time the review session was self-paced for half the students but just two-mintues long the others. Students provided with handouts during the lectures again took fewer notes but this time they actually out-performed those who only received the handouts after the lectures.

The findings provide prelimary evidence that lecturers should provide their students with handouts during the lecture. Regarding the more extensive note-taking that took place when handouts were held back until after a lecture, the researchers speculated that this was ‘unlikely to be a deep encoding task’, which would normally be expected to aid memory retention, and may instead have acted merely acted as a distraction. ”

References:
Marsh, E., and Sink, H. (2009). Access to handouts of presentation slides during lecture: Consequences for learning. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24 (5), 691-706 DOI: 10.1002/acp.1579

“Lecturers should provide powerpoint handouts before the lecture”

http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2010/07/lecturers-should-provide-powerpoint.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BpsResearchDigest+%28BPS+Research+Digest%29

http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Verbal-Energy/2010/0526/Predicate-verbs-fend-off-death-by-PowerPoint

Some highlights from the article include:

“PowerPoint has become a running joke both at the Pentagon and on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan because of the time and energy spent preparing slides.”

“It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control…. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”

“Commanders say that the slides impart less information than a five-page paper can hold, and that they relieve the briefer of the need to polish writing to convey an analytic, persuasive point. Imagine lawyers presenting arguments before the Supreme Court in slides instead of legal briefs.”

In summary: “Let’s not forget the power of the complete sentence and the humble predicate verb – the “motor” of a good sentence.”

Attribution:
The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Verbal-Energy/2010/0526/Predicate-verbs-fend-off-death-by-PowerPoint