Narrated Slideshows 101

10
Do you ever use PowerPoint or KeyNote slideshows? Does your textbook come with supplemental slideshows? Have you grown dependent on your slide deck to deliver your lectures? Have your students grown accustomed to slideshows as a lecture delivery method? Have you ever considered narrated slideshows? Narrated Slideshows 16 132

description

Do you ever use PowerPoint of KeyNote slideshows? Does your textbook come with supplemental slideshows? Have you grown dependent on your slide deck to deliver your lectures? Have your students grown accustomed to slideshows as a lecture delivery method? Have you ever considered narrated slideshows?

Transcript of Narrated Slideshows 101

Page 1: Narrated Slideshows 101

Do you ever use PowerPoint or KeyNote slideshows? Does your textbook come with supplemental slideshows? Have you grown dependent on your slide deck to deliver your lectures? Have your students grown accustomed to slideshows as a lecture delivery method? Have you ever considered narrated slideshows?

Narrated Slideshows

16

132

Page 2: Narrated Slideshows 101

One simple way to convert your typical face-to-face lecture to an online lecture is to narrate your slideshow. Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple KeyNote are powerful slideshow presentation tools. Professors and students can add clip art, charts, videos, music, hyperlinks, and text to their slideshows. With the record slideshow tool, one can narrate a presentation or rehearse timings with a headset and echo cancelling microphone. Narration is particularly useful for English as a Second Language (ESL) learners as well as various learning styles and abilities (CAST, 2012; Gardner 2011).

VariationsNone.

ExamplesUse your imagination. What kinds of slideshows would enhance your lectures? What would be an appropriate slideshow topic for your students? Only you know what would be authentic to your field of study, your curriculum, and your students. To get started, consider these ideas:

Visual Arts•Lighting type images•RGB colour graphs•Broadcast news cycle diagrams•Modern art trivia

Health & Community Studies•Natural disaster images•Vaccine column charts with error bars•Human development cycle diagrams•Health ethics headlines

Science & Technology•Trigonometry in everyday images•Water scatterplot graphs with trendline•Temperature 3-D area charts•Pollution rate statistics

Business Administration•Marketing ad images•Corporate organization charts•Business process flowcharts

133

Page 3: Narrated Slideshows 101

•Legal precedence cases

Humanities & Social Sciences•Mythology images•Consumer price pie charts•Character venn diagrams•Canada census demographics

MeritsA well-designed slideshow with good visual imagery can enhance a lecture. In a flipped classroom or online course, a narrated slideshow is an easy way to adapt a classroom lecture. Not only does the narrated slideshow have audio and visual elements, but it is also self-paced. Student-generated slideshow presentations with narration can make for a great efair. We can even make interactive quiz show games.

Visually-Driven. A good slideshow uses images like photographs, charts, graphs, and maps to augment the lecture. This can really help bring a lecture topic to life. “A picture tells a 1,000 words” (author unknown). Not only does imagery liven our lectures, but it appeals to visual learners. In particular, English as a Second Language (ESL) learners benefit from strong visuals (CAST, 2012; Gardner, 2011).

Self-Paced. In an online environment, if you present the slideshow as a video, then learners have control of the pace (CAST, 2012; de Wet, 2006; Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2012). This is especially useful if they can view it before and after the class to preview and review (Bowman, 2009). Practically speaking, it is also useful when students miss a class to keep up. Finally, a narrated slideshow would work well in a flipped classroom approach. Using mixed representation, expression, and engagement with visual and auditory features makes learning more accessible for all learner abilities (CAST, 2012; Gardner, 2011).

Flipped Classroom. For professors who want to flip their classroom, lecture capture with slideshows is fairly easy. Most of us are familiar with PowerPoint or KeyNote. Microsoft has a new Office Mix add-on to make PowerPoints interactive.The slide templates are visually driven, easy to follow, and easy to adapt or create (de Wet, 2006). Therefore, to master the narration tools is a relatively easy next step. A flipped classroom approach is useful in face-to-face, blended, and online classrooms.

eFairs. In the same way that we deliver slideshow presentations, we often have our students present with slideshows individually or in groups. Consider having students create their own narrated slideshows to share in an efair in the learning management system

134

Page 4: Narrated Slideshows 101

(LMS) rather than delivering in class. It saves class time, especially in large classes, by moving the presentations to a flipped classroom. This is especially good for shy students and English as a Second Language learners (CAST, 2012). Make sure to encourage students to comment on their classmates presentations and review peer critique keeping the core rules of Netiquette in mind: be polite, friendly, and respectful (Shea, 2004).

Games. While not narrated videos, you could even make interactive games with slideshows. Using hypertext, hyperlinks, and action buttons, you can create simple quiz show like games. There are many open source PowerPoint templates for trivia games like Jeopardy or multiple choice games like Who Wants to be a Millionaire. These can be great for preview and review to a lesson. Students can place individually, in teams, in the classroom, or at home.

ChallengesMost slideshows lack good design elements. Many are full of text heavy slides that students copy from without thinking about critically. These slideshows are passive rather than active. Narrated slideshows work well for flipped classroom approaches but do create large files.

Poor Design. PowerPoint replaced the old slide projectors that teachers used to use to show pictures on a large screen. When teachers used these images, they used them just as visual aids to augment the lecture and discussion. According to Isseks, the problem with PowerPoint “is not the power or the point, but the presentation” (2011, p.74). Somehow, PowerPoint has morphed from an audio visual aid into a mind-numbing and monotonous (de Wet, 2006) lecture script of text heavy notes, bullet points, and even full paragraph passages. Instead of replacing the slide projector, it has become a substitute for the overhead projector and photocopier.

Probably the most widely viewed PowerPoint is An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore. His slideshow, turned documentary film, won several awards, including two academy awards. The slides consisted of mainly photographs, charts, graphs, and maps. He used the slides as audio visual aids to enhance his message. Imagine if his slideshow had been only bulleted lists; would it have had the same impact?

It is with the visual aids that a slideshow impacts a lecture. If you, as the presenter, need your notes, you can use the notes, outline, or handout, features in PowerPoint and KeyNote rather than display your script to the class to read and/or write down. You can make your script available to students who may need it, namely English as a Second Language (ESL) students or those with learning disabilities. However, many students say

135

Page 5: Narrated Slideshows 101

that they can read your slides, so they do not need them read by you, too. Slideshows work best as audio visual aids to augment your lecture.

In her book, The Non-Designer’s Presentation Book, Robin Williams has several suggestions for designing effective presentations. For example, if you must use text, then limit your bullet points to 5 per slide and use the active voice - avoid passive voice and -ing words - the less wordy, (the verb ‘to be’) the less characters. If you use a banner on your first slide, it is not necessary to carry your branding over to every slide. She suggests telling a story with your slides. Most importantly, she suggests asking yourself if you really need a digital presentation before you start to plan (2009).

Overuse. Watch out for overuse of the bells and whistles like too much colour, background image, moving objects, transitions, animations, sound effects, and cheesy clip art (de Wet, 2006), which can be distracting and hindering to some learner types and abilities (CAST, 2012; Gardner, 2011). Further, slideshow templates can take away from professor and student creativity (de Wet, 2006). Good slideshow design consists of simple slides with images and very little text (Isseks, 2011). Title slides can have impact; for example, a slideshow consisting of newspaper headlines, literary quotes, or political phrases to discuss could be very powerful.

Passive. In addition to the pitfalls of a poorly designed slideshow, presentations are passive for learners (de Wet, 2006; Gier & Kreiner, 2009; Isseks, 2011). It is like a Pavlovian response in what Isseks calls the “bulletization of education” (2011, 74). Students see the slides and mindlessly start to copy into their notes without any creative or critical discussion. The learning is only transmissive not transformative; the slideshow “fools us into thinking we have ‘taught’” (Isseks, 2011, p.76). This type of teaching only serves surface learning for coverage and for content memorization tests but not deep learning (Isseks, 2011).

Teacher-Centric. Not only are presentations passive, but they are also teacher-centred (de Wet, 2006). If we add some active

136

Don McMillan

Watch a hilarious ten-m i n u t e v i d e o w i t h comedian Don McMillan discussing what not to do i n a P o w e r P o i n t presentation

Page 6: Narrated Slideshows 101

learning techniques like content-based questions, we can make the presentation more student-centred requiring students to think critically, resolve problems, or create solutions (de Wet, 2006; Gier & Kreiner, 2009; Isseks, 2011). Further, we can use mixed media like clip art, images, graphs, videos, audio, and narration rather than bullet points (Isseks, 2011; Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2012). This enhances the learning, especially for visual and auditory learners (de Wet, 2006; Gardner, 2011) as well as for English as a Second Language (ESL) learners.

File Size. Narrated slideshows are very large files. Posting such a slideshow on the learning management system (LMS) may take you a long time to upload as well as download for the students. It can also bog down your LMS in general. In fact, any slideshow file can be difficult to download depending on the compatibility of the student’s computer software. Therefore, it is a good idea to convert your narrated slideshow to a web-hosted video.

You can save your slideshow as a movie on PowerPoint and KeyNote. Otherwise, you can convert your slideshow with SlideShare or iSpring. Then, you can host your video on YouTube, Vimeo, or iTunes as well as SlideShare by creating an account and setting your privacy settings. Finally, you can post a link on the learning management system (LMS). Your students can do the same with their own presentations to share in an efair.

Instructional DesignUse a backwards design approach. First, start with your learning outcomes. Second, create your assessments. Third, plan your instructional activities. Finally, choose a technology to enhance the lesson.

Design. Consider your curriculum; look carefully at your accreditation standards, graduate attributes, program learning outcomes, course learning outcomes, and lesson learning outcomes. Will a narrated slideshow fulfill the learning outcomes? How will you prepare students to follow a narrated slideshow? What technologies will you and your students need to learn in order to create narrated slideshows? Will slideshows enhance the learning experience?

Develop. Browse the Internet for sponsored or hosted slideshows already existing in your field. Determine if your textbook provider has supplementary slideshows to use or build upon. Review existing slideshow technologies. Most of us are familiar with Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple KeyNote; while you can use Slides on Google Docs or Shows on Zoho Docs to create a web-based presentation, it does not have the record narration features that PowerPoint and KeyNote have. Alternatives to a slideshow, especially for visual images might include Haiku Deck, Pinterest, Flickr, or Instagram; however, these all

137

Page 7: Narrated Slideshows 101

lack narration features. Create stunning statistical images, infographics, with shareware like Infogr.am, Picktochart, or Canva.

Create your own slideshow using a software program of your choice. Plan your talk with lots of prompts for students to stop and reflect, discuss, or create. Practice your lecture with the rehearsal and timings features in PowerPoint and KeyNote. Record your lecture using the narration feature and a echo cancelling microphone.

Types of lectures. A lecture is a talk or form of address to a large audience. Most lectures are expository - the professor talks and the students listen. More modern lecturers incorporate interactive activities into their lectures. They stop and ask the students questions or have the students summarize ideas in pairs or small groups. Some professors use clickers, student response systems, like Socrative, or even Twitter during their in-class lectures to keep students engaged. There are many ways to make a lecture participatory:

•Bingo•Crossword•Fishbowl•Case Study•Summary or Reflection•Mind Mapping•Placemat or Job Aid•Panel, Press Conference, or Talk Show

Plan your lecture using the outline tools in the slideshow to help you storyboard your presentation (de Wet, 2006). As with any talk or speech, begin with a hook to capture the audience - question, quote, definition, anecdote, or history. For a live readily adaptable lecture, use a current event, however, for lecture capture, choose a more sustainable and universal hook that will not date. Provide your students with an overview of your lecture, with an introduction, body, and conclusion, to guide your students with taking notes. Wrap up your lecture with a brief summary of the main points and some future considerations or cliffhangers to keep your audience in suspense until the next lecture.

Universal Design for Learning. Make sure to use good basic elements of design. Each slide should have a focal point, which you can create with CRAP -contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity (Williams, 2008) (Williams, 2009). If you must use text, for greater readability, use black text on a white background or white text on a black ground. Limit bullet points to five per slide and remember to capitalize bullet points, use familiar fonts, and avoid all capitals (CAST, 2012; DHHS, n.d.; Williams, 2008) (Williams, 2009). To learn

138

Page 8: Narrated Slideshows 101

more, consult the Sheridan Accessible Learning Environment Faculty Resource for using universal design for learning (UDL) best practices.

Deliver. Decide what students will do before, during, and after the slideshow. Before the slideshow, students might read their textbook and complete a pre-quiz. During the lecture, students may complete interactive exercises. After the lecture, students might do a post-quiz or journal reflection. The slideshow should be authentic, active, and applied.

TechnologyTo create a narrated slideshow you will need four things. First, you will need slideshow software like PowerPoint or KeyNote. Second, you will need an echo cancelling microphone to record your narration using the narration tools provided in the software. Third, save your slideshow as a movie. Fourth, you will need to host your slideshow on a web-based platform like SlideShare, YouTube, or Vimeo; post a link to the narrated slideshow in your course.

ReferencesBowman, L. (2009). Does posting PowerPoint presentations on

WebCT affect class performance or attendance? Instructional Psychology, 36(2), p.104-107. Retrieved from Sheridan College Library

Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST). (2012). Universal Design for Learning. Retrieved from http://www.cast.org/index.html

de Wet, C.F. (2006). Beyond presentations: Using PowerPoint as an effective instructional tool. Gifted Child Today, 29(4), p.29-39. Retrieved from Sheridan College Library

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). (n.d.). The research-based web design & usability guidelines. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Retrieved from http://www.usability.gov/guidelines/

Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft Office Mix

Apple KeyNote

SlideShare

iSpring

139

Page 9: Narrated Slideshows 101

Gardner, H. (2011). Frames of mind: the theory of multiple intelligences (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Basic Books.

Gier, V.S. & Kreiner, D.S. (2009). Incorporating active learning with PowerPoint-based lectures using content-based questions. Teaching of Psychology, 36(2), p.134-139. doi: 10.1080/00986280902739792 Retrieved from Sheridan College Library

Isseks, M. (2011). How PowerPoint is killing education. Educational Leadership, 68(5), p.74-76. Retrieved from Sheridan College Library

Shea, V. (2004). Netiquette. Retrieved from http://www.albion.com/netiquette/book/index.html

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and learning at a distance (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Williams, R. (2008). The non-designer's design book (3rd ed.). Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press. Retrieved from Sheridan College Library

Williams, R. (2009). The non-designer’s presentation book. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press. Retrieved from Sheridan College Library.

140

Page 10: Narrated Slideshows 101

Written by Paula OggPhotography by Jonathan Eger

CreditsBookry Ltd

Common Craft LLC© Centre for Teaching & Learning 2016

Published by Sheridan College All rights reserved

No part of this material may be reproduced without express written permission

cxli