Eliminating PowerPoint altogether: a brave experiment

Posted on April 20, 2010 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Organizational Solutions

I’ve discussed the shortcomings of thoughtless reliance on PowerPoint before. I was recently made aware of an audacious experiment tried out at Ashridge business school in the UK. As reported by Phil Anderson here, the purpose was “to see what the effect would be on us as learning and development professionals and more importantly how participants would find the experience, if PowerPoint was done away with all together and not a single slide was used”.

The effect, it turns out, was largely beneficial, and in ways beyond my immediate expectation. Not having PowerPoint forced the teachers to think more carefully about their message and how to convey it effectively. But it also enabled completely new ways of teaching it; for instance, teaching now involved the entire physical space of the room, not just a screen at one end. Teachers devised a variety of ways to engage their audience, which in turn reported a more enjoyable learning experience. As the article sums it up: “our experience has shown that presenting in other ways is liberating for both you as a presenter and your audience.” I like Liberating; it is a powerful scenario.

There are caveats, of course, and there are situations where judicious use of a presentation adds definite value. I myself prefer to use a mixed mode where I speak my mind, but  use slides to show images or diagrams that augment the audience experience. Not having any projected slides at all would probably be a bad idea in some cases, but in others it could lead me in intriguing and promising directions that I might never explore otherwise.

An interesting question that all this brings to my mind is what effect removing slides entirely would have on the distribution of speaking skills. Neither university professors nor corporate managers are selected on speaking talent; their abilities in this area must fall on a normal distribution. PowerPoint may be serving as an equalizer, making the good and the bad able to present in the same mediocre manner. My first guess is that removing PowerPoint would expose the innate variance in teaching skills, much more than the standard method does. That is, good teachers may do better than they had with PPT, while poor speakers will do much worse without the “crutch” it provides.

Where I’m really curious is how this might affect the very best speakers. Would they remain just as effective with or without slides? Would giving PowerPoint to Cicero or Demosthenes have made their speeches even more impressive, or would it have encumbered them? Perhaps they’d keep their excellence while speaking in a completely different style?

Thoughts, anyone?

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He doesn’t DO PowerPoint!