CIT 2007 - WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

TUESDAY, MAY 29, 2007

Getting More Out of PowerPoint in the College Classroom, Part I:
PowerPoint Redesign

Instructor: Judith Gustafson
Coordinator of Instructional Technology
Adirondack Community College

Time: 9:00 am - 12:00 pm
Location: Feinberg Library 108
Rating: Intermediate
Platform: PC
Cost: $40

Description:

While the buzz on the blogs is all about Web 2.0, wikis, podcasting, virtual realities, social
networking, and the latest hot applications, PowerPoint is still the first tool most instructors turn
to when they begin teaching with technology in the classroom and PowerPoint is all the
instructional technology many of them will every need or want. The popularity of PowerPoint in
the classroom is understandable: PowerPoint has the virtue of being pretty easy to learn, it is a
useful tool for organizing ideas and helping both instructor and students stay on point, and its
multimedia capabilities provide a convenient single platform for collecting diverse images,
sounds, and movies for show and tells that appeal to a variety of learning styles. Yet we have all
seen the negative side of PowerPoint lectures: a single slide that appears to display the complete
contents of War and Peace, slide transitions that induce vertigo, bullets that fly in from every
which way with annoying pings and whooshes, and presenters who read every word of every
slide.

Part I: PowerPoint Redesign couples a few simple principles for clean graphic design along with
cognitive theories of multimedia learning offered by Richard E. Mayer (Multimedia Learning,
2001) and other researchers to guide workshop participants in redesigning one of their own
PowerPoint presentations. Techniques for actively engaging students in the presentation will also
be examined, including the use of a classroom response system (i.e. clickers).

Upon completion of this workshop, participants should be able to:

• create a basic PowerPoint lecture with effective graphic design
• integrate graphics, text, and narration according to cognitive principles for better learning
• incorporate active learning techniques into their presentation.

Participants should have at least beginning level skills using PowerPoint and should plan to work
on one of their own presentations during the hands-on portion of the workshop.