The PowerPoint Revolution hasn’t gone far enough
August 13, 2008 by Olivia Mitchell
Welcome to this blog - my aim is to make a difference to the success of your presentations. If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! Olivia
We’re in the midst of a PowerPoint revolution as more and more people take on the ideas of Cliff Atkinson and Garr Reynolds. That’s great - countless people are being saved from death by bullet-point.
But many presenters still see PowerPoint as a visual aid, as an adjunct to their presentation. A take-it or leave-it enhancement.
Here’s my proposition - PowerPoint is your equal partner in your presentation.
The evidence
My support for this proposition comes from the theory of Dual-coding. This theory was proposed by Allan Paivio. He proposed that we have two ways of processing information - a visual channnel and a verbal channel:
Paivio’s theory is supported by many research studies which show that when both visual and verbal representations are used, people both process and remember the information more effectively.
The design of e-learning applications has close parallels to the design of presentations. They’re both about transferring information from one person to another. E-learning design principles include Paivio’s dual-coding theory. We should take it into account in our presentations too.
What does this mean?
If you decide not to use PowerPoint (or any other visual aid) in your presentation, you are potentially missing out on the learning power of the visual channel. It’s like you’re driving a Porsche at 50 Kms an hour. You’re missing out.
How to use PowerPoint to exploit the visual channel?
Check out this post on application of visual-thinking to presentations inspired by Dan Roam’s book The Back of the Napkin.
Other ways of exploiting the visual channel
It doesn’t always have to be PowerPoint. Here are some other ways that I’ve posted about in the past:
1. Word-pictures
You can paint word-pictures on the minds of your audience. Imagined visual images are also powerful. Research shows that imagined images also contributes to enhanced recall. So don’t forget the word-pictures.
2. The flipchart
The flipchart has been eclipsed by PowerPoint. In this post I compare presenting the same information - via PowerPoint or via the flipchart and explore the difference in impact.
Go well with your next presentation. If you found this post useful, subscribe to my RSS feed.
Related posts:
- 5 steps to effective Powerpoint Presentations
- The 3 steps to creating a PowerPoint Diagram
- PowerPoint slide design - the basics
- Hand-drawn sketches in PowerPoint
- The Top 10 PowerPoint slides from Slideshare
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Thanks for this stimulating article Olivia. Clear, Concise and Thought provoking and I loved the example slide. We need to keep sharing this message as so many people have only seen powerpoint as a bullet point ridden information dump. You have prompted me to think about the need to give presenters a grounding in learning styles as a rationale for using more visual channels too.
Thanks Gavin. I prefer not to use the term learning styles. This is because to many people, learning styles means that some people are visual, some auditory, some kinesthetic. This is not supported by scientific evidence. The dual-coding theory says all of us are visual, all of us are verbal - we all use both channels (there will of course be variations). This is supported by scientific evidence.
But you’re right as presenters (and trainers of presenters) it is helpful to have an understanding of the theories as to how the mind works.