It is now clear that traditional bullet point slides really don’t work.  If something is complicated we can’t read the slides and listen at the same time.  Generally your audience will give up doing both.

The challenge is to find a different way of using slides if you are not artistic, zany or blessed with the ability to create pithy messages. Just this week I was working with a very busy client who had to rapidly develop a presentation on a very complex topic, including slides. All he could do was to simplify and thin out his slides.

David Gibson’s Trainer Tips useful fortnightly tips from www.Eureka.com recently provided a simple practical answer to this challenge.  I have reprinted it here:

It’s Official – Bullet Points Hinder Learning

I guess most trainers knew that – but until now it was just an instinctive feeling we had that we couldnt’t actually quantify. Well, Dr Chris Atherton, a cognitive psychologist carried out research using different formats of PowerPoint presentations – bullet points and ’sparse’ slides and found that the sparse slides returned double the recall of bullet points. Why? Because here learners are using 2 pathways in the brain, the auditory part of the brain which also handles the written word and a second part of the brain, the visual cortex which handles pictures. So rather than overloading the auditory cortex while ‘boring’ the visual cortex, you stimulate both. It also means that once the slide has been ‘processed’ by the brain, learners can concentrate on the spoken word.

So this tip builds upon that research and suggests ways to help maximise the recall potential of your learners when you have to use PowerPoint for some of your training.

Bullet Points vs Sparse Slides
Here is an example of a traditional type of slide that uses bullet points and a graph.

Chris’s research would suggest to maximise the learning using PowerPoint for this slide, you should use more slides with a reduced amount of text per slide rather than a single slide showing multiple bullet points. For example you might use several slides of just sparse text , or the same sparse slides including images .

How to maximise the learning when using PowerPoint

• Design your slides without using bullet points.
• Break slides down to a single idea per slide and ideally use about 4 words.
• Use an image only if the image ‘adds’ something to the content. Remove it if it’s there just to make the slide look ‘nice’ as this act as a distraction to your learners.
• Only put key information onto you slides, ie what you want your learners to focus upon.
• Make your learners work eg put a graph onto your slide but omit the axis number and have learners try to ‘guess’ the axis and the numbers, or in our example, we could include the text “Increases retention by up to …” and we could ask learners to have a guess at the number . In other words, remember to involve your learners in the learning.

To view a presentation using this method click here. Note, this is a presentation and I wouldn’t suggest you train using this style.

The actual research was presented at the recent Technical Communication UK Conference in 2009 by Dr Chris Atherton. Click here for further information on Dr Chris Atherton.

Call To Action

Design your slides for maximum retention. Do this by avoiding bullet points and ‘cluttered’ slides. Instead use multiple slides which include around 4-6 words and maybe an image to enhance the content.