Death by PowerPoint or Persuasive Presentation
David JP Phillips highlights five principles to make a better PowerPoint and ensure that the students are engaged and retain the information you are presenting. First, he discusses the importance of only putting one message on each slide. This ensures the students are focused on one thing at a time. Second, Phillips discusses the amount of retention that takes place in each individuals working memory. In order for the PowerPoint to be successful you must present short text with one related image if any. This ensures that the audience is able to quickly read what is on the slide and then focus on you talking about the subject. Third, the size of the words is important. Generally, the heading is larger than the rest of the text, but he argues that this should be switched as the text being bigger will draw attention to the importance of it. Fourth, he discusses the importance of contrast within a slide. If you fade the points that have already been discussed or fade all text except for what is important it draws people’s attention to the significant point. He also discusses the importance of a dark background rather than a white one to get the focus away from the slides and onto the speaker. Lastly, he discusses the importance of the number of objects on each slide. Rather than filling up the whole slide and making a shorter PowerPoint he emphasizes that there should be no more than six things on each slide. This does mean that you have to make a larger PowerPoint, but you are keeping the audiences focus throughout.
Dom McMillian discussed a lot of similar points. He highlighted the importance of short concise slides, writing in point form rather than including full sentences. This backs up Phillips point that the audience will be trying to read all the text rather than listening to the speaker. McMillian also says that less is more, making the text move and having the slides transition in weird ways draws attention away from the information at hand. Through both discussions they emphasize that a PowerPoint should be a background tool that is used for a presentation, not something that provides all information to the audience.