A review of:

Better Than Bullet Points: Creating engaging elearning through PowerPoint

By: Jane Bozarth

We have developed an understanding with our years of experience and our familiarity with

Bloom’s Taxonomy, the importance of addressing three main learning domains: cognitive,

psychomotor, and affective. In my opinion, this covers three of the four H’s in the 4-H pledge.

As we work to develop training content for professional and

volunteer development, we must grow beyond the days of

merely providing information to our audiences.

Do we want them to remember the content? Yes.

Do we want them to understand the content? Of course.

In order to make our learners move to the next level,

developers need to move to new horizons. We must develop

our content so learners can learn to apply, analyze, evaluate, and create using their new found

knowledge.

The author of the book Better Than Bullet Points does a nice job outlining strategies to do this,

as well as how best to deliver content using PowerPoint to enhance user interface (UI).

Application: Solve

Experiment

Practice

Experience

Analysis: Connect

Infer

Taking it apart to see how it works

Synthesis: Contrast and Debate

Compile, accumulate

Structured case studies

Examples

Evaluate: Allow to judge

Develop course of action

Case studies

Simulations

There are key points with examples open for discussion:

Multi-media principle: Learning is enhanced by the presentation of words and pictures

rather than words alone. Which is best overall? Can you further simplify and use

pictures?

Avoid cognitive overload – keep slides simple, without extraneous items

Or

Develop a storyboard

Include the slide number and length of time the slide will be show

Include a description of the content and the elements you will use on each page

Add visual elements or graphics

List all resources you will use

Include the last three items together under content

Under Notes, add any special items like

Who is presenting this slide

Cumulative timeline for the presentation

Text integrated into image helps learner acquire knowledge, if they are separated it

increases cognitive load. This is a quick example of this concept:

As you examine these slides, think about your eye movement and the cognitive process you

go through to connect the information. What are your observations?

Or

Chunk content into smaller pieces. Think about this slide for a moment.

If you were presenting this information to an audience that never created a storyboard, how

could you take this information and “chunk it” into even smaller pieces?

How could you include pictures and graphics to visualize your point?

When moving material already created for another purpose, think “transform” not

“transfer.” This is an opportunity to remove the extraneous material. Remove it from the

presentation but leave it in your notes pages.

Inventory your assets. What can you use to deliver your content? Assemble everything

and differentiate. Worksheets, quizzes, video clips, speakers, slide shows, role play

information, case studies, practical application strategies.

We are building certain elements into the e-Academy like an eJournal and personal

implementation plan. As a presenter/developer, you can use additional elements to make

your sessions engaging. Remember these sessions will be live with the possibilities of

interaction via social media and discussion threads, and archived for future use and

directed to the individual learner.

Storyboard – this will help you organize your thoughts, outline your session, identify

your assets. This will guide your development efforts.

Build your graphic user interface (GUI) or how the learner interacts and navigates. The

good news here is that this will be taken care of in the delivery. The presenters will have

their presentations up and will manage their movement, this includes the timing of key

videos, poll questions, and other elements we may choose to use. Each presentation will

also have the support of a technician that will help the presenter with posting items in a

timely and professional manner. The archived recordings with elements will be taken

care of by our platform provider. We also have a graphic design specialist assisting in

developing branded elements like PowerPoints and PDF files and other objects.

Pick graphic elements (clip art and pictures) that connect the learning and that can tell a

story on their own. Ask yourself, does this reach the affective (feeling) learning domain?