… for those new to this blog, is one of UD‘s much-used Categories.
Why?
Because PowerPoint really pisses students off.
Reading directly from a plain, white PowerPoint presentation [is likely] to induce a coma lasting approximately two hours and 40 minutes.
… The other day I sat through another painfully long lecture. I spent the entire class period reading the textbook instead of copying down notes from the PowerPoint, and by the end of class I had enjoyed myself and understood more of the material than I had in the past five weeks. I left the class quietly seething under my breath and shooting my professor plainly dirty looks because there I was, wasting a beautiful afternoon in a class that wasn’t worth more than its $92 textbook.
Jessica Lynch, University of Colorado
Here’s another one, from Amanda Joinson at the University of Massachusetts:
The classes where the professor is standing in the front of a cavernous lecture hall on a podium accompanied by a poorly executed PowerPoint presentation are perhaps the worst. I swear that ten minutes into the class the audience has been lost, and the professor’s voice turns into that “Blah, blah” that echoes in the background of Charlie Brown cartoons.
These classes often come with the monotone professor who mumbles while looking down at the podium the entire time, while reading from notes that probably have not changed for years.
Both writers use the same Charlie Brown blah, blah or (in the case of Lynch, Charlie Brown wah, wah), meme.
March 10th, 2011 at 8:36AM
“These classes often come with the monotone professor who mumbles while looking down at the podium the entire time, while reading from notes that probably have not changed for years.”
No, Amanda, those were the good old days before PP. The more things change, right?
I congratulate the other student who read her textbook, though. That is a thrillingly novel experience for many students.