Effects of Redundancy and Paraphrasing in University Lessons: Multitasking and Cognitive Load in Written-Spoken PowerPoint Presentation

Does Powerpoint Promote Learning?

As a starting point, it seems appropriate to analyze the point of view of teachers and learners about the usefulness of PowerPoint. From a recent study of Cantoia et al. (2011) we obtain a description of the intentions and objectives of the teachers. The sample interviewed in their survey – a group of University teachers – states that they use it with the intention of promoting the understanding of their lessons. The interviewed teachers also said to prefer concise formats, partially redundant with the spoken message, as these formats should facilitate the identification of the structure of the lesson. The aim seems to be to give a cognitive guidance, by which, according to Richard Mayer, one wants to make sure that the audience members build appropriate knowledge in their memory (Atkinson, 2004).

With regard to opinions and behaviors of students, it is possible to refer to researches showing that students prefer classes where there is a presentation with ppt compared to transparencies or absence of every presentation tool (Bartsch & Cobern, 2003; Blokszijl & Naeff, 2004). In fact they find classes which use ppt more compelling, clear and organized (Apperson, Laws & Scepansky, 2004). They also prefer when content is organized in a synthetic way with the use of graphs, diagrams and bullet points (Cantoia et al., 2011).