Ditching the PowerPoint
One of the lessons I taught in my training year has stuck in my memory ever since. I can't tell you a single thing about the lesson itself, or what unit of work it was in. I do remember it being the "dreaded year 9s". The fuse in the electronic whiteboard tripped. I was without a PowerPoint presentation. Lesson over.
Except it wasn’t. I spoke to the students in the same way. Came up with ways to verbalise concepts instead of showing. The behaviour of the class was amazing (and it wasn’t normally)! Reflecting on the lesson at the time, I put this down to the fact that they had to listen to me to understand. They were all tracking me, they stopped their whispered conversations, and when I modelled something to them they asked clarifying questions about it afterwards. The slideshow appeared to be a crutch. A way for them to zone out.
My classroom without the slideshow
My interactive whiteboard for most of the day sits empty. My physical whiteboard and trusty black pen are used far more often.
This is now an active decision I’ve taken. But it took me years after that fateful lesson during my training year to reach the conclusion that the best lessons I teach do not require a slideshow. I found PowerPoint to take a huge amount of my time away and reduce my lessons to a format that was inherently unmusical. I do use the interactive whiteboard, normally to throw up some random recall questions from musictheory.net or to use MuseScore to highlight parts of the music I want students to focus on.
The case for using slideshows
Why do we use them to teach? There are a few possible answers:
It structures the lesson for the teacher. They get through the slideshow, and the lesson is taught. This means that teachers don’t spend valuable cognitive load on what they’re teaching. They can “forget” the lesson and just teach the content.
Slideshows are easy to share from teacher to teacher. Open it up and the "do now" is on the board and off they go.
Because images, animations, and videos make learning fun.
To engage visual learners. (see here why I’ve crossed this out if you do not know already)
My arguments against
Each of these points is valid, and I understand why teachers find them helpful. However, I believe there are some significant drawbacks that should be considered. Here’s my rebuttal:
This can cause rigid and formulaic teaching. The quantity of content is not the lesson. Students truly understanding the content is the goal of the lesson. If there is one thing you should be spending cognitive load on, it is teaching the class based on what they do and do not know.
Tacit knowledge isn't transferable. I’ve never opened another teacher’s slideshow and been able to teach effectively from it. There’s a lot of tacit knowledge in their heads about how they are delivering the slideshow that I do not own. That means I cannot use it effectively for teaching.
Learning itself is fun. Not the GIFs. If students can feel they are progressing and can see that what they’ve learned is important, that’s all they need to “have fun.”
That’s my view, but what does the research say?
Research on the use of PowerPoint in classrooms has produced mixed results. While PowerPoint can be an effective tool for organizing content and incorporating multimedia, studies have highlighted some drawbacks. For example, a study by Bligh (2014) found that while students appreciated the structure PowerPoint provided, they often became passive recipients of information rather than active participants. This is what I noticed myself in that lesson during my training year. Clark and Mayer (2016) also discussed how poorly designed slides can increase cognitive load, making it harder for students to retain information. In some cases, the presence of text-heavy slides discouraged meaningful note-taking and reduced opportunities for spontaneous questions or discussions.
There are numerous reviews into teaching methods - Prince (2004) and Mayer & Fiorella (2014) give very clear guidance on how redesigning PowerPoint presentations can enhance learning. So the research doesn't say slideshows are bad. And nor am I.
The findings suggest that while PowerPoint can have some benefits, over-reliance on slideshows can hinder student engagement and deeper learning. This aligns with my own experience in the classroom: when students are not able to 'zone out' and rely on the slides, they are more likely to be actively involved in the learning process. The good design elements outlined by academics also take time to implement. A lot of time.
What impact did ditching PowerPoints have on me?
When I stopped using PowerPoints, I created 1 slide that I use for every class. I'll share this later, but it enables homework to be set in 2-3 minutes at the beginning of the lesson and for me to quiz and check their prior learning. Then we get on with the planned learning for the day (assuming the quizzing doesn't uncover any misconceptions or need to reteach content).
Before each lesson, I quickly edit the homework title and quiz title - 3 to 4 words of text that need changing.
This affected my day-to-day in a number of ways:
Increased Student Engagement: Students became more attentive and interactive when they couldn't rely on the slides for information.
Adaptive Teaching: Without a rigid slideshow to follow, I could adapt my lessons more easily to the students' understanding and needs in real time. The quiz shows they don't understand something crucial to today, no problem. I'll grab my board pen and off we go - let's learn it again!
Better checking for understanding of what the students know: they're quizzed on content every lesson and they can see their own understanding improving over time in the scores they are achieving.
Better outcomes for students, as they understood more over time by being quizzed on it repeatedly (i.e. they recalled it more often and therefore retained the knowledge for longer).
More Productive PPA Time: Instead of creating and endlessly tweaking slides, I use my PPA time to focus on creating meaningful homework activities, adapting the lesson plan to fit the needs of an individual class, and supporting the teachers in my department by popping into their lessons from time to time (and not for a learning walk or book look - actually supporting like a music specialist TA).
Authentic Interactions: My teaching became more spontaneous, leading to richer discussions and more genuine connections with the students.
My lunchtime became a time where I eat and play guitar for 10-15 minutes, while my breaktime is a time where I can now go to the toilet *and* get a coffee. It's no longer a difficult decision as to which activity takes priority.
If you're interested in gaining back some time, try ditching the slideshow for a lesson or two. Choose a lesson that's still on your to-do list rather than one with an existing slideshow. You might be surprised at how much more engaged your students become, and how much more present you feel in the classroom.
References
Bligh, D. A. (2014). What's the Use of Lectures?. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2016). E-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.
Mayer, R. E., & Fiorella, L. (2014). Principles for Reducing Extraneous Processing in Multimedia Learning: Coherence, Signaling, Redundancy, Spatial Contiguity, and Temporal Contiguity. The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning, 279-296.
Prince, M. (2004). Does Active Learning Work? A Review of the Research. Journal of Engineering Education, 93(3), 223-231.
