So I had a friend who was commenting on a slide presentation she was watching there the presenter flipped from slide 8 to slide 32, and then back to slide 9. I’m not even going to get into the reasonableness of a 32 slide presentation (I would argue anything more than 30 needs to be rethought. What I do want to talk about is the concept of flipping forward and back through slides.
In a perfect presentation, and perfect lecture, this would never happen. Your slide deck should be constructed, and your lecture should be organized in such a way that this isn’t necessary.
However, there are some cases where it might become necessary, particularly when people start asking questions.
The being said, there’s still one and hard fast rule, particularly for a lecture, Never flip forward. Let me explain why flipping backward is ok, but flipping forward is not.
Sometimes you may be lecturing, and a student asks a question where a past slide provides a graphic that really helps answer the student’s question . Take for example, I’m giving a lecture on Caribbean geography, and several slides back someone says “I want to understand the impact of Guantanamo bay on the overall security of the region.”
It just so happens that I’ve got a slide of the Caribbean, with Cuba in the center of the slide, and it shows where Guantanamo bay is. I’d probably flip back to that slide to help answer the student’s question.
However, lets take the situation where a student asks a question, and I realize there’s a slide 15 slides down the deck that answers the question. Sure I could flip forward, and pull up that slide and answer the question, except
- When we get to this slide in its proper sequence, the student’s will be thinking about that slide in a different context now, and may not get the appropriate impact.
- Its very likely that the question the student asked will be answered when we reach that slide in the normal course of progression, and if we answer the question now, it may through off the flow of the lecture.
As with all things, there are exceptions, but I think these are some pretty good rules to go by.