A week or two ago, I sat in a meeting where we attempted to weigh the intelligence of our faculty and students. Oh, we were too polite to call it that exactly; ostensibly at least, we were discussing how we could make our wikis more user-friendly. The discussion covered a range of possible cures for the perceived disease, from more intensive faculty training to student scaffolding to more and better tutorials. All well and good, this desire to make things easier for our end users. As a fairly recent convert to Usability, I embrace its tenets and evangelize for its centrality in our design process. Still, I wonder if things are really so difficult for our users, and if so, for whom and how many? Are we looking at a usability issue or a user issue? Are we simply reacting to the squeakiest wheel?
We use PBworks for collaborative work spaces in select online courses at SNL Online. Most have been used successfully, and most difficulties can usually be traced to unfamiliarity with the user interface: difficulties that are generally addressed and resolved with PBworks’ video tutorials and the task-specific tutorials we produce in-house. However, some students and faculty struggle mightily with the same interface, and the same support materials do little to alleviate their distress. Why is this, and what should be done about it?
Now, I will grant you that users differ in their facility with tools. And I will further grant you that we designers sometimes fail to make things as clear as they might be.
However. When the only appreciable difference between successful and unsuccessful engagement with a technology is the user set, I feel we have to examine whether we’re responding to a real usability issue, one that is intrinsic to the design of the technology and its interface, or to a problem of poor users.
I fear too often it’s the latter. Lacking any data on our users, we respond to the complaints of a few and extrapolate their difficulties to the general population. If a faculty member or student complains about their problems using a tool, we immediately jump to the conclusion that the tool is defective and devote hours of support and development time creating resources to ameliorate the perceived deficiencies, resources that we assume are better than those already produced by the makers of the technology. All this effort is expended to solve the problems of a small set of users who will never be made comfortable with a new technology by any level of support. Further, all of this activity occurs in the absence of any data indicating real need or a cost-benefit analysis.
I’m not sure what the solution to this might be. My department doesn’t have the resources to conduct extensive user testing for each technology we might introduce. However, we also don’t have limitless resources to chase the ephemeral perfect tutorial or provide one-on-one student and faculty support. Perhaps we have to admit we can’t help everyone, every time. Perhaps, once in a while, the squeaky wheel must go ungreased.
In 1998, I had my first full-time job as a computer-graphic designer in a media center at Indiana State University. The word “computer” in my job title differentiated me from the other graphic designers in the office. While they produced print materials like banners and posters designed in Photoshop or Illustrator, I didn’t do much of the drawing and printing, because to me, the word “computer” meant but one thing—PowerPoint!
PowerPoint, believe it or not, was a high-end, technical tool at the time (meaning higher than overhead transparencies). My job was to produce PowerPoint slides for televised distance-learning courses. I remember getting those highlighted textbooks from faculty and typing page after page of content into PowerPoint slides. I remember the “wows” from faculty thrilled to see text flying in line by line. I remember the same thrilling feeling I had myself when my designer peers asked me whether the animated presentations I created were really done with MS PowerPoint—“It looks like a (Macromedia) Director product,” they said. Soon I was crowned “the PowerPoint guru.”
Yet, deep in my heart, I knew that this glory would not last long: my crown would become an old hat once other users figured out my tricks—or worse, they would be discovered by the vendor, who would then make them part of the application. I thought this would happen within a couple of years.
So I was shocked a few months ago when an associate vice president of my institution asked me about offering a PowerPoint workshop, because she had seen too many presenters that “were sorely in need of training on how to give effective PowerPoint presentations.”
After thirteen years, with all the comings and goings of dazzling new tools, guess what? We are back to PowerPoint!
I was even more shocked when I learned that the enrollment of the workshop (Beyond the Bulletpoint: How To Design Low-Tech High-Effect Presentations) reached thirty-two in a matter of days and the event organizer was asking me whether we should close it or offer another session. Oh, come on, we can’t close it! It was my good old PowerPoint staying cool in the era of Web 2.0! And besides, isn’t it wonderful to know that after more than a decade, people are still interested in my tricks (I mean, they still haven’t got them yet)?
I guess this has been a long enough teaser. Let me get to the meat of this entry: the tricks.
My tricks in using PowerPoint are as simple as following two basic rules: a) avoid PowerPoint sins and b) inject creativity into the presentation design.
Avoid PowerPoint Sins
I consider the following behaviors sinful for any PowerPoint presentation:
Sin I: Long, Massive Text Blocks
This means more than six lines of content with a font size smaller than 18. Anyone who throws full-blown paragraphs into the slides is asking PowerPoint to serve as a teleprompter and forgetting the fact that those things are supposed to be hidden from the audience.
Sin II: Long, Full-Sentenced Bullet Points
This might be less sinful than paragraphs, but it still makes it impossible for the audience to grasp the key points no matter how loudly you read them. (And by the way, reading from the slide doubles the sin.)
Sin III: Unnecessary Decorative Elements
Unless your audience is too immature or intellectually challenged to understand your concepts, you should control the use of clip art. I still feel ashamed of this slide I created thirteen years ago. The clip art of the tool box is nothing but an insult to college students.
Sin IV: Excessive Use of Animation
With the infusion of all sorts of digital gadgets, our world is already overanimated. Unless it carries some meaning, animation is merely annoying (see the next section for the meaningful use of animation).
Sin V: Serif Font Type and Low-Contrast Color Schemes
Picky as it may sound, text in Times New Roman in a PowerPoint screams that it was created by a nonprofessional designer. Those little semistructural details at the end of some of the strokes aren’t reader friendly for at-a-glance or on-screen reading. And common sense will tell you that any dark texts on a black or blue background aren’t reader friendly either. Our daily writing media is black text on a white background, which can teach us a simple but very useful lesson on what is the friendliest combination of colors.
Inject Creativity into Presentation Design
I love reading the debate on whether creativity is teachable. This year’s International Conference on College Teaching and Learning frames the question as, “Creativity: Art or Science?” I believe creativity is a mix of art and science: while it does require a fair amount of natural talent, cognizant exposure to innovative ideas and procedures will stimulate creative sparks within the ordinary.
Over the years, I’ve seen many great presentations—with and without the use of PowerPoint. The ones that have used PowerPoint usually used it to serve the following four purposes:
To inform, to illustrate, to inspire, and to prepare.
To Inform
In most cases, PowerPoint is used as a visual aid for content delivery during lectures and presentations. People use it to get their point across. But the best way to get the point across is not by throwing out the points. I found that when information is presented in a story-telling way, it’s easier for the audience to comprehend. The following video didn’t offer any text-based definition or bullet points of Google Wave features; instead it used animated graphics to tell us a story of e-mail. Can the same be achieved with PowerPoint? My answer is yes.
To Illustrate
In order to combat the laziness of human brain, Dr. Chris Atherton from the School of Psychology of the University of Central Lancashire offered some strategies in designing PowerPoint slides:
As you might have noticed, this presentation didn’t use any of the given templates in PowerPoint. For most of the slides, it is black text over a plain white background. Also, it contains no animation and is, therefore, well suited for online viewing via Slideshare. The plain design makes the plain truths that the author wants to share stand out without interruption.
In other cases, animation can be a powerful tool to keep the viewer focused on the flow of information, like in this presentation I did last year on online teamwork (click on the image below to access the presentation on Slideboom):
To Inspire
TED.com, which is my favorite Web site, inspires me not only with their presenters but also by some of its creative PowerPoint design. Look at this one by Larry Lessig on “Laws that Choke Creativity” and feel the choreographic harmony between speech and slide show. In this case, the power of the PowerPoint lies in its ability to strike on the key ideas at the right moment.
TED.com assured me that by delivering the best and the brightest directly to our computer screens, technology is breaking through the knowledge monopoly! Someday we might move into an age of presentation Darwinism where the mediocre can no longer survive as people click through the Internet to view and rate only the best content. Until then, sites like TED.com have at least helped set up a high bar in terms of presentation design.
To Prepare
Lastly, I have seen PowerPoint being used as a notebook provided to the students by the instructors before, during, or after class. This kind of PowerPoint can be as self-sufficient as a textbook that allows students to prepare for class or an exam or to save them from having to take notes in class. Projecting these slides on the screen to guide an in-class lecture can be dangerously boring (if nothing else, just the dimmed light induces the desire to doze off). These slides are more suited to be a handout than a presentation, but if you really want to use it, you can try to remove some key concepts so as to stimulate some brainstorming from students.
The other option takes some time, but PowerPoint does allow us to create minitutorials by hyperlinking text and graphics between slides.
Do you have any creative ideas in using good, old PowerPoint? Post them here so we can share.
I’m a fairly typical, multitasking, always-connected member of generation Y (or a late gen-Xer, depending on who sets the cutoff date). My laptop and I are rarely apart, and I quickly run out of things to occupy my time when I’m deprived of high-speed internet access. (My parents finally upgraded from dial-up just before the holidays and, as a result, I finally agreed to stay with them for more than 48 hours.)
In short, I get bored easily, which is why I’d always suspected that Las Vegas might be my ideal vacation destination. After all, Vegas is designed for people who can’t focus. Buffets are abundant—ideal for those who can’t even commit to a particular entrée for an evening. Cirque du Soleil shows are multiplying like rabbits—perfect for anyone who loves live theatre but hates paying attention to one performer for more than fifteen seconds. Nearly every casino offers a superficial imitation of some ancient city or wonder of the world—fantastic for the tourist who can’t imagine spending an entire week in just France or Italy or Egypt. You could also go through the detailed analysis of US poker and understand what you can do when you want to gamble online. You can also check out online casino platforms like level up casino NZ for exciting prizes! Visit online casinos like mpo888 to enjoy an exciting casino experience from the comfort of your own home.
I just returned from my first Vegas trip, and unfortunately, it seems all of the city’s catering to multitaskers comes at a high price. At first, I was drawn in by the bells and whistles. A slot machine featuring stars from the hit ‘70s game show Password? Amazing! Where do I insert my money? A shopping mall with a maze of canals and happy couples riding in gondolas while being serenaded by a man dressed like the Hamburgler? Incredible! I’ll take two tickets, please.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before the bells and whistles lost some of their appeal. “Doesn’t that gondolier know any songs other than ‘Mambo Italiano’?” I wondered. “And why does the attendant in the Parisian pastry shop sound like Marisa Tomei?” I could squint my eyes and pretend the stamped concrete was real cobblestone and the faux-finished walls were made of real plaster. Yet, eventually, I had to accept that underneath it all, Vegas was largely composed of some very mundane raw materials—primarily concrete and overweight chain-smokers.
The same holds true for online courses. We can try desperately to hold our students’ attention with flashy games and constant variety. We can reel them in with the promise that we won’t make them work too hard or stare at any one thing too long. But sometimes what’s fun or easy isn’t what’s best. A bad discussion prompt is not better just because it takes place online. A boring lecture is not more interesting just because you’re watching it on an ipod. And a hamburger with half a press-on nail wedged under the bun is not better just because it was served by a young woman from Des Moines dressed like Cleopatra.
I like to joke with participants in our faculty-development workshops that there is one key to being an amazing online instructor: just be riveting. Of course, that’s easier said than done. But we all have ways of presenting material that can keep students hanging on our every word. By choosing what to present and how to present it, you can make your lectures and assignments funny, relevant, scary, provocative, or inspiring. And you don’t need technology bells and whistles to do this. Professors have been creating riveting lessons long before the advent of the first educational technology—paper. (And just imagine all the awful things teachers have forced students to read and write simply because it was finally possible to do so without a hammer and chisel!) That’s not to say educational technology is useless. It’s just important that we don’t let it be a driving force when designing a course.
A colleague recently sent me information about the PBS program titledDigital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier. Portions of the show featured several educational technology scholars discussing the importance of engaging today’s multitasking, millennial learners. There were the usual cliché shots of students texting and updating Facebook while their dinosaur of a professor drones on from the stage below. The scholars talked about the need to keep students engaged the same way their favorite computer games do, with one scholar promoting an entire school curriculum built around game-based learning. While I salute educators for their openness to new teaching methods, I think it’s critical that we not lose sight of what truly makes for an engaging course and what great teachers have been doing right for hundreds of years. In the end, there’s no need for flashing lights and faux finishes if you already have the real Eiffel Tower and great pastries.
Back in December of 2007, Rick Salisbury (see 12 Web Tools of Christmas Post) mentioned EditGrid as one of his top tools. While EditGrid is a great tool for creating shareable spreadsheets with many advanced, Excel-like features, I have found a new use for this application in online classes—virtual sign-up sheets! More than a few times in the past few months, I have needed a tool to allow students to sign up for something—be it to lead a discussion, create a blog post, or choose a book for review. With our current learning management system (LMS), Blackboard 8.0, there is no easy way to do this, so faculty are left using some sort of e-mail/discussion work-around or simply assigning students. While these work-arounds suffice, the process has always seemed clunky and overly difficult. I recently remembered Rick’s post, and the idea of using EditGrid to create a virtual sign-up sheet was born. I am currently piloting it in my own class, and students seem to be able to sign up without difficulty, and I am able to see the results easily. A win-win in my book.
So, you may ask, how would I go about creating a sign-up sheet for my own class? First you will need an EditGrid account. Once you have an account, you can simply create a basic sign-up sheet in Excel (or any of these other supported spreadsheet programs: OpenDocument, Gnumeric, OpenOffice.org 1.0, Lotus 1-2-3, or CSV). Note that EditGrid doesn’t support the .xlcx extension, so you have to save your Excel file as an Excel 97–2003 Workbook.
Then, upload it to EditGrid. Because I need the students to be able to edit the sheet (by typing in their name), I set the permissions on the worksheet to allow for Public Read/Write. (You can actually set the default permissions so that whenever you upload spreadsheets, they are always Public Read/Write but not searchable, if you don’t want them to be found using the search box on the EditGrid homepage.)
Once the spreadsheet has been uploaded, select the cells you want to embed in your course Web site—I selected the two columns that had times to sign up for and cells for the students’ names. Then choose Publish Cell/Region.
Once it is published, you will see a box with code to embed an EditGrid widget.
Simply paste this code in your course Web site. (You typically have to change the options for the text box from TEXT to HTML. In Blackboard, click the button above the text box that looks like this: <>.) Save the item and viola! You have a virtual sign-up sheet.
