While PPT-centered multimedia lectures in university classes have the advantage of engaging students and enhancing their understanding, they also have the disadvantage of hindering students’ ability to self-direct their learning and causing them to become lazy, and it’s time to rethink this approach.
When I was a college student, the most important thing I did as a knowledge-seeking student was to prepare diligently for class. Preparing for class includes many things. Getting in the right frame of mind for class, not being late, reviewing and studying the material, etc. But the most important thing I did was to prepare my class materials, such as textbooks and writing utensils. Throughout elementary school and high school, I always ended the day by grabbing the textbooks I needed for the next day’s class. This habit continued after I entered college, and I usually prepared for the next day’s classes the day before. This is still the case today, but there have been some changes. Now that I’m in college, I often leave my textbooks at home or don’t even buy them, even though I have them. More and more people come to class prepared with only the PPT materials uploaded by the professor.
What are the reasons for this change? Perhaps the biggest reason is that more and more classes are taught with PPTs rather than textbooks. Of course, not all classes are PPT-centered, but many are. When I was a freshman in college, many of my classes were taught by professors showing PPTs and writing on the board, but as I got older, professors started using tablets instead of chalkboards and writing directly on the PPT material. This is a change made possible by advances in science and technology, and it will continue to happen in the future. Advances in science and technology are changing the way we teach, and many classrooms are now utilizing multimedia lessons.
But are they a help or a hindrance? On the one hand, they can increase student engagement. Videos and colorful PPTs are more engaging than textbooks with long lines of text, and they also summarize the textbook content, making it easier for students to understand the material. These two advantages are probably why multimedia classes are on the rise.
However, there are also significant drawbacks. In particular, there are several problems with distributing PPTs to students that summarize the lecture content. First, it limits students’ ability to summarize and digest long textbooks on their own. Reading long texts and summarizing them on your own helps you move beyond just knowing the knowledge to being able to use it. However, if students only learn from the PPT summarized by the professor, they will only understand it in the way the professor presents it, not in their own way. This can lead to a decrease in their ability to utilize the knowledge. When you understand and digest long texts in your own way, you create your own unique knowledge system. For example, the speed at which you find a book on a shelf with many different types of books will be different than the speed at which you find a book categorized in your own way. These small differences make a big difference in your ability to utilize knowledge. In my opinion, the true meaning of learning is not just the acquisition of knowledge, but the application of that knowledge. Therefore, there is a danger in handing out PPTs to students.
It can also breed laziness. For students in the sciences, the nature of their classes is such that many formulas are used, and professors will often demonstrate them in class. Although professors try to explain things in a simple way, it can be difficult for students to understand. In such cases, students may think, “I’ll just look at the PPT later.” In class, many students, including myself, did not ask the professor questions in the difficult parts and postponed their efforts to understand. The consequences of this laziness are maximized during exam periods. Students who are normally lazy will try to study in a short period of time during exams, ignoring the thick textbooks and studying from summarized PPTs. As a result, they focus on memorization rather than understanding and applying knowledge. Considering that the ultimate goal of learning is to understand and apply knowledge, this type of multimedia teaching should be avoided.
It can also lead to laziness on the part of professors as well as students. If you listen to the stories of students who retake a course, you’ll notice that the PPT material hasn’t changed at all. In some cases, even typos that were pointed out in the previous class were not corrected. How can we say that professors are doing their best to research their classes if they can’t even fix simple typos? Are professors also neglecting class research by relying on easy PPT materials?
While multimedia lectures have the advantage of attracting students’ attention and being convenient for teaching, some methods of multimedia lectures have fatal flaws. In particular, we need to rethink the current popular practice of distributing PPTs summarizing lecture content to students.
