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

1. 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.
2. 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.

 

There are lots and lots of articles giving advice on slide deck construction for instructors.  These are seven rules I think get missed all the time.

The slide deck is a roadmap

The slide deck should serve as a “road map” to a lecture. Think of the lecture as a journey, and the slides as the map to where we’re going. Each slide should assist us down the path.

The slides are all connected to each other

When the instructor lectures, the slides are not a series of topics that are listed without relationship to each other, they are tied together as part of the narrative. What is said between each slide is many times as important as what is said when on each slide. When developing slides, and order, consider the relationship, and how the instructor is going to segue from one slide to the next.

Timing is everything

In an instructor led course, a typical slide should include between 2-5 minutes of discussion.  When you create the slide, ask the question “What is the instructor going to talk about for at least 2 minutes?” Remember two minutes can be a long time (Take a watch or a timer, and measure two minutes). If a slide does not have two minutes or more worth of lecture content, it better be incredibly important content that cannot be included on another slide.

The slide is an intellectual trigger to the instructor

The Slide should serve as a trigger to the instructor to remind him or her what needs to be discussed next. In general, the title of the slide serves as the trigger. Multiple slides with the same title don’t assist the instructor in reminding them what to talk about unless the image is extremely compelling (which, it never is)

Illuminate, don’t complicate with graphics

Graphics on a page should be directed towards the topic being discussed at the time.  Extraneous graphics are more likely to confuse the student and instructor, rather than assist them in understanding the topic. When you look at graphics on a page, ask the question. “How does this relate to the topic in the title?”

Repeating is a good thing, as long as it isn’t sequential

The rule of teaching is that you have to show a student something three times in order for them to absorb it.  While we don’t explicitly count for this, repeating a given concept, particularly with a different context, helps the student learn. However, don’t just do it three times in a row.  If you do it three time in a row it gets dull, and the student shuts dow

Organization is key

It is much easier for students to process and remember information, if, when we present it, we give it context.  Take the following list of words

• Orange
• Five
• Scott
• Smith
• Anomoly
• Television
• Twelve
• Car
• Red
• Sam
• Lincoln
• Difference
• Clock
• Cards
• Six

 

Trying to memorize this list can be pretty challenging, but if we organize it and categorize it, it becomes easier to remember

 

Colors	Names	Objects	Numbers	Words
Orange Red	Scott Smith Sam Lincoln	Television Car Clock Cards	Five Six Twelve	Anomoly Difference

I’ve just started teaching a new class called Introduction to computing, that I offered in Columbia MD.

I offered at at Tenable Network Security

I’ve been doing online education for quite some time, and the defacto standard for an LMS (Learning Management System) has been Moodle because it is free and open source.   My experience with Moodle dates back to the 1.x days.   Moodle, despite its complexities, is an incredibly flexible LMS.

However, with the advent of Moodle 2.x, I’ll be honest and say I’ve begun to feel like it’s flexibility has become a burden.

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I ran across this survey on MOOCs and they are asking for more participants.   Beware, its a pretty long survey

 

 

https://niu.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8AFi45AJaGfw3TT