Perception and Use of PowerPoint at Library Instruction Conferences

PowerPoint’s Contribution in a Colleague-Centered Presentation

Through the use of evocative visual media and interactive tools, PowerPoint can be a tool to engage audiences. Rather than presenting at audiences with PowerPoint, it can help you hold conversations with colleagues. Using the guiding principles described above, we offer the following suggestions on how to use (and not use) Power-Point to help you connect with and engage your colleagues:

1. PowerPoint is a visual medium. “It lends itself to topics that are better explained graphically.”²⁴ Use it in that way. Think visually. Move toward a judicious mix of visuals such as photos, illustrations, diagrams, flowcharts, and video clips. Transform your words and stories into visuals and sounds. Use visuals and sounds to reinforce and add to your words rather than repeat them.²⁵ To illustrate, if you are talking about student perceptions of plagiarism, instead of providing your colleagues with a slide containing a paragraph of text quoting a particular student or five bullet points of data, why not show several short video clips of students describing their perceptions? To ensure that your presentation does not become infomercial-like, make sure to include students that don’t agree with the official association position, that don’t simply echo dominant ideas, or that don’t find your library services or resources helpful. Put another way, don’t just select and reinforce your message by pointing to successes and positive feedback; make sure to include failures and negative feedback in your presentation. Another way to transform your text into visuals is to represent the emotional feeling of your message. Again drawing on the plagiarism theme, rather than a bulleted list of sentence fragments telling explaining plagiarism is a crime and that those guilty of it can face penalties, why not show a photo of someone cheating, a prison inmate, or someone being arrested and handcuffed to supplement your words during the talk?

2. Consider ways you can use PowerPoint to solicit your colleague’s perceptions and experiences. For example, PowerPoint presentation consultant Cliff Atkinson demonstrates how one can use an evocative approach with PowerPoint. Rather than reading or describing the text on your slides, in the evocative approach you invite colleagues to contribute through speaking about visual images.²⁶ For example, instead of reading through a list of six bullet points characterizing the behaviors of millennial students, show a simple slide featuring a photo of a millennial student on a blank background. The slide should contain no text. Ask the audience to describe the typical research behaviors of the student depicted in the slide. Ask them why and how they have arrived at these conclusions.

3. Design your presentation in fifteen- to twenty-minute sections with a change of mode and activity between each section. Use interactive tools such as clickers (audio response cards) to solicit your colleagues opinion and to refresh attention every ten minutes or so. For younger colleagues, consider using avatars and animation to introduce topics and interact with the audience. Like video clips, clickers, animation, and avatars should be used judiciously, or you run the risk of irritating your colleagues and distracting from your message. The challenge here is to develop effective questions that engage your colleagues, elicit their opinions, and help them reflect on the problem.

4. Develop a nonlinear presentation. Instead of reading though a sequential list of slides, create your presentation in modules or sections. Use triggers and hyperlinks to move seamlessly to topics of interest to your colleagues.

5. Use text sparingly. The more text you use, the more tempted you will be to read from the slides.

6. Don’t try to fill your entire time with slides. Shorten your content, and if you are using slides primarily composed of text, keep the number of slides to about one for every five minutes of presentation. If your slides are primarily visuals, then you can show considerably more. When your slide is no longer useful, blank the screen by pressing the B key (for a black image) or the W key (for a white image) on the keyboard. Press the B or W key again to return to your slides.

7. Choose color combinations that contrast well and that convey the emotional mood you hope to communicate. We recommend a dark blue background with white or yellow text. Because projectors often display colors differently, test your completed slides with several projectors.

8. Make sure your font size is large enough to read. Paradi claims that “any font size less than 24 point is too small to read in most presentation situations.” He suggests using 28- or 32-point size for most text and 36- to 44-point size for titles.²⁷

9. Buy and use a remote control to advance your slides. Move around the room and talk with colleagues. Try to keep the room as light as possible without jeopardizing viewing of the screen content.

10. Provide a position paper or essay in word-processed document as a handout. Here you can use all the text and numbers you need to communicate your message.

11. Don’t read your slides!

Conclusion

Despite its prevalence at library conferences, the PowerPoint presentation is a misunderstood and underresearched form of communication. Consequently, many librarians have produced and viewed far too many unproductive PowerPoint presentations. People do not fly across the world to attend conferences to sit in a dark room and look at the back of someone’s head while they read incomplete sentences on a projector screen. People attend conferences to share their insights, take part in conversations, contribute to the solutions to problems, and take information back to their library to improve services. If presenters choose to use PowerPoint, they should develop techniques to visualize their ideas and engage their colleagues using the tool. We hope our suggestions will help in the development of more interesting, understandable, enjoyable, and memorable learning experiences.

David J. Brier and Vickery Kaye Lebbin are social sciences librarians at Hamilton Library, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Submitted for review December 9, 2007; revised and accepted for publication April 18, 2008.

Reference & User Services Quarterly, vol. 48, no. 4, pp. 352–361
© 2009 American Library Association. All rights reserved. Permission granted to reproduce for nonprofit, educational use.

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