Pedagogical criteria for PowerPoint slides.

1. Introduction

I have been alerting you before that most information on the web on PowerPoint presentations and quality slides relates to business environments, conferences, motivational talks - the presenter wants to sell a product, an idea, a message, wants to convince and win over the audience.

You want to use PowerPoint slides as a tool in facilitation - to assist learners to learn, to achieve the learning outcomes of their course, to become competent in their field of study. Hence you are to think of the educational value of using PowerPoint slides in a session. You will need the pedagogical criteria to 'measure' whether slides that may be technicaly perfect are of any use as resource in a learning session.

You are to design and use, in a session with learners, a set of PowerPoint slides of high educational quality that can be used interactively in a learning session.

Some of the key questions to ask yourself is before using PopwerPopint slides as learning resource is

• What is the advantage of using PowerPoint slides in this topic, in this session with these my learners?
• Can the objective of the session be achieved without using PowerPoint slides?

If using PowerPoint slides has no added educational value to enhance learning – do not use it! Just because you can project something on a screen doesn't mean it’s necessary or even a good idea to do.