I’m taking a sabbatical from writing new blog posts. You’ll be seeing some re-runs and old favorites for the next little while. You can always write me back with suggestions or ideas just by responding to this email!
My son is in high school, and recently he shared that a student in one of his classes gave a lengthy presentation using slides crammed with text, reading each bullet point aloud. “How am I supposed to learn?” he asked later. “I can’t process this information this way.”
I’m not blaming the student. I’m sure she was doing exactly what she has seen before, and what has “worked” in the sense that she got a good grade on regurgitating the information.
I have noticed this trend in the very small sample size of my two kids, particularly their experiences in middle and high school. For many projects, the default assumption seems to be that the student will create a slide deck, throw their notes into it, and “present” it to their classmates and teacher. There are a couple of reasons I think this is a real problem.
First, there’s the issue my son highlighted. The presenter didn’t do the work of synthesizing and prioritizing the information for the audience. As a result, it’s impossible to tell what’s important, and how to connect the dots between the salient points. Why have a slide deck at all if you’re going to read all the information? The slides aren’t adding anything to the audience’s understanding of the material. You can distribute the slides as a resource, but they’re not helping anyone in this form.
Second, the students aren’t learning how to use the technology in the way it’s intended, to complement the spoken content. Well-chosen images, timelines, charts, and graphs could have underscored the presentation and made the material more memorable and relevant to the other students.
Third, and this is really where I’m going with this, the acceptance of this style of presentation establishes a precedent. It says: “It’s fine for you to read your slides that are full of text.” It says: “It’s okay not to think about how this experience will be for the people listening.” It says: “You don’t need to put thoughtful effort into this to make sure others understand.” It says: “This is just an assignment.” This is a prime example of default intention run amok—the student needs to complete her assignment, not connect with others, synthesize the lesson, or make sure others do well on the test.
Y’ALL. People learn that “this is how we do it” in high school, then continue in college, and then bring this habit to the workforce, and then, guess what? Their boss refers them to us because they aren’t going to move further along in their careers until they are better at public speaking and connecting with an audience.
Here’s my plea. If you’re an educator, craft these kinds of assignments so that students understand that the goal is more than extracting nuggets of information and spouting them back. What if the student was graded on how well the others in the class understand the material they presented? If that were the expectation, I guarantee that they would approach the assignment differently.
It’s always easier to slide by (no pun intended). What would happen if we truly committed ourselves to creating value for the audience every time we speak? Even when it’s a report on chapter 5 of the textbook for our 10th grade classmates, even when it’s a weekly update to our team, the people listening deserve the best we have to offer.
