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Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Revisiting Powerpoint, again...
As the new semester here began last week, I used my tried and true method of teaching big classes with powerpoint slides. (For some reason I can't access the permalink to my Sept 1/05 post about why I love powerpoint, but you can find some reflections by Kristin Hickman here and the original post in the archive here.) My experience with powerpoint in bigger classes the last two years has been consistently good in large measure because it freed me from the podium and I felt liberated to wander around the room and still have my notes available to help me guide my class.
This week, however, I've begun to experiment in my last two class sessions: crim pro with about 45 students, and crim law, with about 63 students. I have the slides on the computer screen at the podium for me to look at but I haven't actually been projecting the slides to the class. Certainly with crim law, which I'm now teaching for the fourth time, I feel more comfortable moving around the class even without the slides nearby or projected. To a slightly lesser degree, the same is true with crim pro now that I'm teaching it for the second time. Importantly, I think the students feel they are connecting to me more in the conversation without powerpoint slides even though people with aural comprehension issues (like me sometimes) might prefer to see the point rather than to hear it.
I wonder if powerpoint might be the teacher's "laptop." If we're willing to get rid of student laptops to facilitate improved educational conversation, then perhaps we should chuck our laptops too, including powerpoint. I think I'll do a series of experiments and see which I think is most effective. One thing's for sure and not surprising: the anxiety about using powerpoint or not certainly diminishes the more you do this and that's something to savor rather than endure any nightmares over.
Posted by Administrators on January 16, 2008 at 03:37 PM in Teaching Law | Permalink
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So I'm doing just the opposite from Dan's plan: teaching classes for the first time using powerpoint slides just on my laptop (not projected to the class), and planning to create powerpoint slides to show to the class the second time I teach these classes. I wanted to avoid having slides for all the reasons discussed--it can be a crutch for students and profs alike. But I've found that not projecting anything to the class has its annoying costs as well. When I want to focus on statutory language or a hypothetical, I have to repeat myself or refer to a point in the text, when it would be easier to simply point to the board. And there are many instances where images would be helpful and I find myself drawing a sloppy diagram on the board or describing the image rather than having a nice, neat slide to refer to (a particular problem in copyright). So next year I'm going to split the difference and include these features (stat text, hypos, images) in Powerpoint slides, but stop short of spelling out the entire lecture. We'll see how that goes.
Posted by: Dave | Jan 24, 2008 12:11:39 PM
At the AALS mid-year meeting a couple years ago, Jonathan Simon from Boalt gave a really fantastic powerpoint aided presentation. What I enjoyed about his use of powerpoint was that it didn't duplicate anything that he was saying -- instead it had pictures and quotations that illustrated the points he made. I recently saw a similarly skilled presentation earlier this semester when Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar (Stanford) gave a talk to the faculty here at ASU.
I think that when powerpoint is used in a way that complements the class (rather than summarizing the lecture), students are less likely to rely on the slides as a substitute for attendance.
I'm experimenting with no laptops in the two (rather small) classes that I'm teaching this semester. And I've decided to try and avoid using a computer myself when I'm in front of the class. We'll see how that goes . . .
Posted by: C.Hessick | Jan 17, 2008 10:41:57 AM
I took a corporate law class where this precise change happened by accident (the projector stopped working so the Professor could read his own slides, and posted them on the class website for us after class, but the class did not see them). The improvement in his lecturing style-- delivery, ability to explain what he was talking about, etc., was marked. I think for many people, especially those who have taught the same class for a long time, it is simply much harder to remember all of the things that one has to explain if one shows one's note to the class.
Things that seem self-evident are not always other-evident.
Posted by: Biz. Orgs Student | Jan 16, 2008 9:08:44 PM
I would go a bit further and argue that ditching instructors' Powerpoint would be much more salutary than banning students' laptops.
Powerpoint, when used unskillfully:
1. Invites students to become stenographers and uncritically copy down the slides.
2. Worse yet, lets students think that they don't need to pay attention--or even attend class--and can just get all they need from the slides when the instructor makes them available. (And what if they're right?)
3. Discourages participation because the student knows that the desired answer is on the next slide, and any other response will be viewed at least initially as wrong or unhelpful to the instructor's session goals.
Posted by: Bama 1L | Jan 16, 2008 7:10:49 PM
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