Images and Text on PowerPoint Slides: “Tracking” Their Impact on Information Retention

Introduction

In the last 20 years, pedagogical techniques in higher education classrooms have grown and developed tremendously. A major catalyst for such growth and development has been the advent of novel technology. PowerPoint^TM emerged as a presentation tool in the late 1980s and continues to be one of the key teaching tools in academia, both in and out of the classroom. In contemporary higher education, it seems that use of such presentation tools has grown exponentially as more and more classes are being offered in fully online, hybrid, live Zoom-delivered lectures, synchronous instruction, or flipped-classroom formats, with students spending significant time viewing pre-recorded lectures that include PowerPoint presentations with instructor voice over (Becker et al., 2018; Goodwin & Miller, 2013; Strelan et al., 2020). Further, the Covid-19 pandemic forced the use of more technology at the university level in order to continue offering courses (Daniel, 2020; Guraya, 2020; Rapanta et al., 2020). And, it is quite likely that even after we move past the pandemic, higher education administrators and instructors will have recognized the positive aspects of the many technological advances to support learning, which will drive more integration of such technology into university classes (Goh & Sandars, 2020). So, given that such presentation technology is even more integral in contemporary higher education, and likely will be for the foreseeable future, it is important to continue working to understand how students learn best in situations where such technology is used.

There is a history of mixed results related to the effectiveness of lectures accompanied by PowerPoint to enhance student motivation, note taking, interest, information retention and transfer, among other things (Apperson et al., 2006; Lowry, 1999; Mantei, 2000; Susskind, 2005). One aspect of the mixed results may simply be due to the complex milieu of behaviors necessary for the learner to be successful in a dynamic multimedia presentation context. They must visually scan the PowerPoint slide, attend to relevant text, images, and animations; listen to the instructor as they speak about the content portrayed on the slide as well as other relevant spoken information; attempt to develop coherent connections among relevant information presented (both visually and orally); and finally integrate the incoming information with existing knowledge. And, if that is not sufficiently complex, the learner must do this in a more-or-less continuous, nonlinear, and parallel fashion given that the presentation will progress through different topics and slides for an extended period of time (Mayer, 2005; Williams et al., 2017). Further, another potential determinant of the mixed results could be due to the interaction of additional factors, such as the instructor’s enthusiasm and skill at using the technology, the student’s ability to attend to relevant information during the presentation and get it into their notes (if they are taking notes), the student’s interest in the topic, and even the text, images, and animations used to structure the PowerPoint (Apperson et al., 2006; Clark, 2008; Gier & Kreiner, 2009; Nouri & Shahid, 2005; Williams et al., 2017). Mayer (2005) stated that how instructors actually structure their PowerPoint slides reveals how they believe a student learns in a multimedia context. With that statement in mind, he recommends that designers of the multimedia presentation, in order to help the learner be successful, should structure the presentation in such a way as to capitalize on how the mind functions; specifically using empirical work from cognitive psychology to inform design practices (Mayer, 2005).