Death by PowerPoint, and how to avoid it

Imagine if there never needed to be another death by PowerPoint ever, ever, again! 

Did you know over 35 million PowerPoint presentations are given every single day containing on average 40 words per slide but 90% of what the presenter says is forgotten in within just 30 seconds. Which in short means there are a lot of PowerPoint casualties.

It is an occupational hazard you’ve been through, right?

A typical event; the killer (err… the presenter) walks into the room grinning because they know they’ve spent a long time working on their slides to make sure they don’t forget anything. The said slides are loaded with ‘bullets’ and they fire them at the unsuspecting audience till they die.

Some presenters with a more sadistic streak attack the moving bodies with complex graphs, charts, data and of course the giant question mark symbol at the very end which instead of question time has actually come to represent survival.

“If companies would have as little respect for business as they have for presentations the majority would go bankrupt” – Dr John Medina

Pass the coffee!

Sorry to be the sharer of bad news but there’s a new strain of this deadly killer; the prolonged death by PowerPoint and COVID19 appears to have encouraged the rise…

With the close of classrooms during the lockdown, some training providers, tutors/coaches have turned to creating their own online learning but during the chaos and change they’ve found consistency by using a tool they know how to use, the trusty PowerPoint.

Now there isn’t even a presenter to look at as a contrast to the terrible slides there’s just a voice over the top!

Relying heavily on voice-over PowerPoint delivery is not good online pedagogy*, fact.

More importantly, it doesn’t support productive or engaged learning online and surely that should be the reason for creating it in the first place!

Some facts to ponder on:

• According to an article published in Psychology Today (Video Vs Text: The Brain Perspective), the human brain can process videos 60,000 times faster than it processes text.
• Gradually more and more organisations are opting for video-based learning for their employees. It’s not surprising taking all the benefits into consideration as they create a richer learning experience for employees.
• A recent study by Fosway Group of learning leaders on how COVID19 is changing learning found that video content has been the most successful in supporting organisations.

You’ve been in the audience and nearly died by PowerPoint, don’t let your learners become the next victims of the more deadly strain!

Imagine your learners being engaged with online learning, imagine your success rates increasing, imagine your learners coming back hungry for more, imagine the businesses you work with being impressed that you’re not just offering the same terrible e-learning/moving PowerPoint like many others, imagine the time you’ll save and how much happier your tutors and coaches will be without the burden of creating online learning (and let’s be honest that wasn’t what you recruited them to do), the better work life balance you’ll give them with the reduced travel.

Lucy Dunleavy, Managing Director, LearnBox

The learning eutopia! You deserve better, your tutors and coaches deserve better and your learners certainly deserve the very best. And it’s much easier than you think… Book a Discovery Call with LearnBox, or if you do want to create your own content email us and we will send you a free tutorial video that will help you/members of your team create great online content themselves.

*Pedagogy meaning: the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept