Just wondering–how many people out there feel “if you don’t use PowerPoint, then it’s not training”?
I’ve encountered this mindset before at various of my clients (I’m a freelance technical writer and trainer), and I don’t feel that PowerPoint is the best training solution for every situation. In some cases, yes; but not in all. Still, I’ll use it if the client has the above attitude and demands that I use PowerPoint, even though I think a different approach might be more effective.
But recently, my wife had to do a training presentation on behalf of her company for a group of customers. This is not unusual; she often has to present materials, and she is quite good at it. But when her laptop irretrievably crashed the day before she was to make it, and no spare laptops were available, she realized she had to make do without her PowerPoint presentation.
That didn’t faze her–as I said, she is good with presentations, and has done this one so often that she could probably do it off the top of her head. And this is not the type of presentation where PowerPoint is a “must have,” in my opinion–the trainees seem to get far more out of the practical demonstrations she does with her company’s equipment. We did use my desktop computer to quickly run up some handouts, so the attendees could follow along as she spoke and demonstrated the equipment, but what was worrying her was her company’s attitude of, “If you don’t use PowerPoint, then it’s not training.” Not that they would take any action against her, given the circumstances, but still.
How does your company (or you personally) feel about this attitude? Do you think PowerPoint is the best solution in all situations, or not? What might you have done if you were in my wife’s position?
Ooh, I wish this was in the Pit, because irresponsible PowerPoint users have been the subject of my ire pretty much since there started being PowerPoint users …
PowerPoint provides visual aids. It does not provide a presentation. The presenter does !
Too many people think that PP means they can write down their presentation in a series of bulleted lists and then read said lists from the screen in front of the audience. Wrong.
Anecdote: as part of my job we organize speaking events. We’ve had many of them and many examples of PP use, ranging from the slightly helpful to the egregious. Our most prominent speaker did not use PP at all, just spoke from the podium, and all eyes were on him. Granted, he is a fantastic speaker, but I think a lot of fantastic speakers distract their audience from their oratorial skills with the (often badly-done) slides behind them.
I’d have done just what your wife did. I like handouts because you can make notes on them as the presenter speaks (this is one enormous benefit of PP).
I dunno: people learned things before PP, and were trained before PP, and gave successful presentations before PP. The fancy program and neat bullets and cool animations are worthless if the content sucks.
For a very erudite opinion on the weaknesses of PowerPoint, check out Edward Tufte’s essay “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint.” This guy is the “Cecil” of PowerPoint criticism.
My personal pet peeve is when there is no thought given to what will be a useful takeaway reference for the student. Assuming I’ve actually learned something useful in the class, I’m unlikely to want to store and flip through 20+ pages of charts if I need to refer back to the source. I want 1 or 2 pages with a couple of tables that summarize what I need to know.
I train dozens of folks in a corporate setting every month. PowerPoint is expected by my bosses and students so I use it with lots of misgivings. I would be more effective with a few illustrations and only my mouth, but corporate life has its accoutrements. I just talk to the slides now and then and tell personal stories. The chunky handouts I leave them with are aimed at jogging their memories of the class or have written links to the good stuff.
I agree with cowgirl and Harriet the Spry but it isn’t my show totally. I took an all day lecture from Tufte (and got his great books) a couple of years ago. He is brilliant and I recommend everyone experience his entertaining knowledge.
I’m not a corporate trainer, but I sit through and prepare lots of presentations.
I’ve been through many a PP presentation that was, well, muck. I think that package has some potential in the right hands, but it allows people to generate somewhat slick looking presentations that convey little or nothing of interest. But they’re still sort of “slick.”
I’ve got it, but I don’t use it. One of my compadres does, and he slaps together all kinds of colorful crap. His displays are horrid compared to mine, but fortunately he’s possessed of good speaking skills.
Most of my gussied up stuff is done for our CEO, who is a good speaker and uses graphics sparingly, in the “dropping bombs” mode. And he still does it with overheads, which he’s good at. We produce those with either our native interpretation software, or we refine them in CorelDRAW.
And that’s the way I prepare my own presentation materials,