Faculty Blog Round-Up: PowerPoint

Among academic bloggers, yet another battle is raging in the PowerPoint wars.

Margaret Soltan, English professor and the venerable curmudgeon of University Diaries, links to a student’s blog to show how PowerPoint enables and encourages shoddy teaching.

Fellow English professor Alan Jacobs agrees, pointing to students’ sense of entitlement that results from PowerPoint.

Jonathan Rees, professor of history, puts the blame for bad presentations on textbook publishers.

Historian Timothy Burke defends the judicious use of PowerPoint, with suggestions for using it well.

Chad Orzel, a physicist, ponders how best to use PowerPoint, for both in-class lectures and later review.

Physicist Julianne Dalcanton offers a neat tip to solve Chad’s dilemma.

And English professor Scott Eric Kaufman lightheartedly warns of the dangers of putting students in charge of PowerPoint.

What are the benefits and pitfalls of using PowerPoint for library instruction?  How can you integrate it with other presentation tools?

Author: Laura Wimberley

Laura works at the Medical Center Library at the University of California San Diego. In addition to her MLIS, she also has an MA and PhD in Political Science. Her research interests include information policy, scholarly communication, and collection development. You can read more of her writing at Libri & Libertas (http://librilibertas.blogspot.com/).

2 thoughts on “Faculty Blog Round-Up: PowerPoint”

  1. I’m an online student in Drexel U.’s MS(LIS) program. For better or worse, all of my instructors so far have used PowerPoint as their primary tool for online “lectures.” The best use of PP by far has been a screen cast with slides and voice-over from the professor. At it’s worst, PP allows professors to post their face-to-face class visual aids online without the context of their verbal lecture, resulting in rather cryptic (and useless!) online lecture content.

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