Major+Redesign+on+PowerPoint+Presentations


 * __PowerPoint Presentations Redesign __**


 * Analysis || Design || Development || Implementation || Evaluation ||

Last semester, I created a series of wiki pages for Dr. Wissick describing how to create a PowerPoint Presentation. The site did its job, but it did have it's share of problems. The presentations suffered from some redundancy, split attention, and some slides had so much information on them they risked cognitive overload. If the examples being used by the instructor do not demonstrate proper learning techniques, then the learners will not gain anything from it. Also, some of my images risked splitting their attention either because they took up too much of the screen or they simply did not fit with the text. I also incorporated several of the ideas I have learned in this course into my redesign of my analysis and the other ADDIE steps.Analysis: Analyzing the learner, the context, the task, and the needs of this project. My potential learners range from students looking for some advice on making a better PowerPoint presentation, to even teachers who are looking for ways to better keep the attention of their students. I re-designed the chart from my original analysis so that the information is not spread all over the place and it is easier to read. Keeping the attention of the audience can be difficult, and it is important that when making a PowerPoint presentation that while the right visual stimuli can keep their attention, too much visual stimuli can overwhelm the audience and the presentation looses its influence on them.Design: Using graphic design principles and cognitive load theory to redesign the information on the site in the hopes of getting it across better to the learner as well as give them proper examples that demonstrate the proper design techniques when creating a PowerPoint. I also include the three original PowerPoint presentations and the changes that need to be made on them during the development stage.Development: Revising the content on the wiki site and the PowerPoints based on the design phase, and describing the specific changes made to my PowerPoint slides.Implementation: Having the parents from the original project revise their PowerPoint presentations to incorporate the new learning theories and graphic design principles learned in this courseEvaluation: Having the learners take questionnaires to see if the learners can identify what graphic design principles and cognitive load principles are being used in the slides they view. There would also be a survey to see how effective the learners found the PowerPoint presentations to be at informing them on the material being explained as well as keeping their attention.
 * __Preface __**


 * __Analysis __**

1) What is the learning problem?In today's world, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to keep the attention of the students. Many teachers try to find ways to instruct students while still keeping their attention. One of the popular ways of instruction involves teaching students with PowerPoint presentations. Unfortunately, many of these PowerPoint presentations are poorly done, as the slides often do not follow any sort of pattern, or they have too much information on them risking cognitive overload on the audience.My plan is to show how to create a proper PowerPoint presentation that will not only keep their attention, but also succeed in not confusing them by showing them too much information at once.2) What is needed to help get the message across to the audience?Numerous learning principles are needed in the creation of a PowerPoint that can inform them as well as keep their attention. When creating such a presentation, the presenter must take into consideration that the audience may have limited knowledge of the subject being presented so it may be necessary to give some background on the subject, as they also need to understand what is being explained. In order to better keep the attention of the audience, the presentations will also need visual aids that fit the material being explained be they images, charts, or some other form of visual aids. The people learning about PowerPoint presentations range from students to teachers who wish to learn how to create a PowerPoint presentation that will be keep the attention of their audience. This means that while the learners are familiar with PowerPoint, some will most likely be unfamiliar or inexperienced with presentations. Others will need to take into account the age demographic of their audience in the creation of their PowerPoint. The learners will also need to know what sort of information they will need in their presentation, and how to best present it to their audience.The following chart describes the needs and learner analysis of the presenter and the audience: Once the profile of the presenters and audience had been developed, I then needed to create a task analysis for what I would expect to teach the presenters. For this, I created a specific PowerPoint presentation. Finally, I uploaded the file to Slideshare and linked it as a widget to this site. 1) Choose topic that you wish to discuss.2) Review audience needs and decide what visual aids work best to get the information across and keep the audience's attention.3) Obtain necessary files with images, videos, photos, etc. for the PowerPoint4) Organize the information on the slides so that there is not too much information on any one slide in order to avoid cognitive overload5) Look back at the slides created and make sure that no information is repeated, preventing redundancy in the presentation.6) Review material; test in front of a mock audience and gather input based on their reactions/general interest. review audience needs to best determine what you need to focus on in the PowerPoint presentation.7) Create PowerPoint based on the advice from PowerPoint below. Link to top
 * Needs Analysis: **
 * Learner Analysis: **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 24px;">Task Analysis **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 18px;">Task Analysis to Creating a PowerPoint Presentation **

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">There are two groups that must be considered when I design and organize the instruction and instructional materials. For the audience I want to create PowerPoint presentations that are both informative and entertaining enough to keep their attention. For the presenters I want them to create PowerPoint presentations that:1- Demonstrate principles of direct instruction2- Extend PowerPoint presentations to include questions3- Display a great deal of knowledge on the subject.My goal and objective can be stated as: //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">The presenters will create a PowerPoint presentation that demonstrates principles of direct instruction and informs them on a new subject. ////<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">Using a PowerPoint presentation the audience will view slides on a particular subject of information and the demonstrate understanding by answering a series of questions or by doing a brief group project. // <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">One important lesson learned during this semester is that following certain graphic design principles aid in improving the overall presentation. <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">One of the most important things about creating PowerPoint presentations is to make sure that the text contrasts enough with the background so that it is easy to read. Numerous PowerPoint presentations lose their impact when the slides cannot be easily read by the audience even if they can be easily read on the creator's computer.Which of these do you think is easier to read?
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 32px;">Design __**
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 24px;">Following Graphic Design Principles when making a PowerPoint **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 18px;">Contrast **
 * <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">Poor Contrast ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">Poor Contrast ||

<span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">An example similar to this is shown in a PowerPoint I made about good techniques to follow when making a PowerPoint Presentation. <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">Another important lesson to remember is repetition in the slides. This can be done in a manner of ways, including having the same font style, color, lines, or icons. Having numerous elements changing from slide-to-slide can actually do more harm than good, and can end distracting the audience from what is being explained.Having different colors and fonts on each slide can be very distracting, as seen in these slides of my Judaism PowerPoint: <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">It is also important the everything on the page should be visually connected to something else on the page. This includes not only the alignment of headings, subheadings, paragraphs, and images. Everything that is placed in the page should be placed there for a reason, not simply to add something else to the page.These slides use poor alignment, as the images do not convey the text properly: <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">Proximity refers to making sure that related items are grouped together. For instance, it would not make sense to describe one's project goal during the analysis of the learner. When one posts a heading, for example, all of the information below that heading should relate to it. Also, if several slides relate to the same topic, they should be grouped one after another, and not spread randomly throughout the PowerPoint presentation.For example, with these slides from my WWII Propaganda PowerPoint,this slide describes a cartoon that mocks Nazi general Herman Goering:but the next slide about him does not appear until 4 slides later:this is an example of poor proximity as the slides are not grouped together properly. <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">Cognitive load theory provides guidelines that assist in the presentation of information in a way that gets the learner the most from what is being taught. Of the many features that consist of cognitive load theory, the ones I choose to focus on in the creation of a proper PowerPoint are redundancy and the spit-attention principle. <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">It is important to avoid redundancy when creating a PowerPoint, a website, or writing a paper. The problem with many presentations that I see today is students try to cram so much information into their presentations that they do not always realize what they are putting in. Often, they end up putting in information that has been said more than once or using the same example on multiple occasions. This problem is also becoming increasingly common in websites, as many site overwhelm visitors with so many images that it is hard to keep ones focus. In any project or presentation, it is important to limit yourself and to try not to put too much in your work or you risk repeating yourself in your presentation in the form or written text or visual aids, resulting in redundancy.The following slides are an example of redundancy, the same message is conveyed on each slide: Gandhi employed non-violent techniques in the hopes of getting the British to leave India.To correct this problem, I removed any text that repeated the same information about Gandhi, and condensed it to two much shorter slides, in order to prevent the chance of cognitive overload. <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">Occurrences of split-attention are also common in many presentation and web-sites. It is important to limit the number of visual aids because while they can catch the viewer's attention, they also risk distracting the viewers from the message the presentation is trying to get across. At times like this, I am reminded of a famous quote by Mark Twain, "Sorry about the length of this letter, if I had more time I would have made it shorter."Here are some examples from an early draft of my Judaism PowerPoint:These slides have so much content on them, that not only do they split the attention of the learner, they can easily overwhelm the learner with the sheer amount of text: <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">I used these various principles and learning theories to redesign my old PowerPoint presentation so that they would have a better chance of keeping the audience's attention. By using the theories and principles listed above, I hope to redesign my PowerPoint presentations into more effective examples for the learners. The following slide-shows will all be redesigned using these principles.The following PowerPoint I wish to redesign by adding slides that depict the graphic design principles and the cognitive load theory. The PowerPoint gives advice on creating a better PowerPoint presentation and I simply need to add slides that add on to that with what I have learned in class this semester. I also need to change some of the example slides to better show the proper design principles. The "Simpsons" Apu slide will need to be replaced as it has too much visual imagery for one slide. [|**Power Point Advice Original**] <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">View more <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">[|presentations] <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;"> from <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">[|mccreary87] <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">. <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">This is the original PowerPoint depicting Gandhi. The slides are kept as brief as possible while still being very informative. The presentation begins with some background on Gandhi, then his influence and death, followed by his recognized successor Martin Luther King Jr., and then his portrayal in the media. It ends with a conclusion and some questions to see if the audience learned anything from the presentation. Several of the slides are prime signs of cognitive overload, as some have information that is repeated, an example of redundancy. To fix this, my plan is to condense the information on the slides, and even delete some of the slides that repeat the same message about Gandhi. In order to follow the Graphic design principle of alignment I need to redesign the images on a number of the slides, and in some cases I need to remove the slides from the presentation that I could not find images that worked with the text properly, such as the "Time Squad" slide. [|**Gandhi Slides Original**] <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">View more <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">[|presentations] <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;"> from <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">[|mccreary87] <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">. <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">This particular PowerPoint refers to Propaganda films and has activities where the audience tries to identify the purpose of Propaganda, who the Propaganda is demonizing/mocking, etc. This keeps the audience attentive and involved in the presentation, and it is good for keeping the audience thinking throughout the presentation. For this PowerPoint, I needed to make sure that the graphic design principle of Proximity was followed. To ensure this, several of the slides need to be re-arranged, so that the PowerPoint flowed better. The graphic design principle of repetition must also be followed by changing the background color, color of the text, as well as the font so that it is all the same on each slide. In order to prevent redundancy in this PowerPoint, I also need to change the images on the slides titled "Der Fuehrer's Face" and "Reason and Emotion" that show the title of the short a second time. [|**WWII Propaganda Original**] <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">View more <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">[|presentations] <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;"> from <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">[|mccreary87] <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">. <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">This PowerPoint is an example of a group discussion. The presentation describes and gives several examples of Judaism in the Media, then asks the audience to get into groups and discuss religious portrayals and stereotypes that they have seen in the media. The PowerPoint is meant both to get them interested in the subject material, as well as get them thinking about religious portrayals and stereotypes that they have observed in the past. Several of the graphic principles are violated here, meaning that a good deal of the slides need to be changed. Contrast must be addresses on a number of the slides, as with the slide about the movie //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">Schindler's List //<span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;"> and the slide about Judaism and television as the text is difficult to read on these slides. The Cognitive Load theory of split-attention is must also be considered as the slides with an overwhelming amount of text to read can distract the audience from the message that the PowerPoint is trying to make. A number of slides, such as the Family Guy slide and the Gumby slide, do not follow the alignment theory since the images on these slides do not properly match the text. Repetition must also be addressed, as the font styles and colors are different on a number of slides, which also risks splitting the attention of the audience. [|**Judaism and Media Original**] <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">View more <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">[|presentations] <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;"> from <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">[|mccreary87] <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">. <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">These issues are addressed and corrected in the development phase. <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">Link to top
 * <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">Good Contrast ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">Good Contrast ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 18px;">Repetition **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 18px;">Alignment **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 18px;">Proximity **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 24px;">Cognitive Load Theory **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 18px;">Redundancy **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 18px;">Split-Attention **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 24px;">Redesign **


 * __<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 32px;">Development __**

<span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">Visual Literacy is an important concept when is comes to creating PowerPoint presentations, and one that I made sure to follow both in the original design and redesign of this wiki site. When one gives a presentation, they must be concise, interesting, able to keep the audience's attention, and easy to read. PowerPoint presentations must be able to get the point across and be easy to understand. If you try to add to much detail onto one slide you have a much greater chance of either confusing your audience, or losing their attention entirely. <span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">One example of how useful visual literacy is this: you want to describe to a class the fire ant. You could do it one of two ways, one involves giving them a description of the fire ant: //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">The fire ant has seven distinctive body parts: the head, body, abdomen, leg, mandible, antenna, and eye. The fire ant has six legs, and two eyes and antenna. //<span style="font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">The other option would be to show a diagram, such as: <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">The diagram not only shows the parts of the fire ant, it also shows the location of all the parts. The clear outlines help simplify it, the colors help identify the different parts of the body, the heading "Fire Ant" provides the context of the image, and the color key names the parts of the fire ant without cluttering the diagram. This sort of thing is clear, concise, and easily gets its point across to the audience. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">The following slides are all redesigned using the techniques and theories listed in the design phase. They include a PowerPoint that gives advice on how to create a good PowerPoint presentation that I redesigned to include graphic design principles. Also, to follow the graphic design principle of repetition, I changed all of the backgrounds to green. [|**Redesigned PowerPoint Advice**] <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">View more <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">[|presentations] <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;"> from <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">[|mccreary87] <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">The remaining three are the PowerPoint examples I redesigned to give the learners ideas on the different types of assignments PowerPoint presentations can be used in educating people on various subjects.To fix the redundancy problem on a number of the Gandhi slides, I condensed the information on them, and even delete some of the slides that repeat the same message about Gandhi. In order to follow the Graphic design principle of alignment I needed to redesign the images on a number of the slides, and in some cases I removed the slides from the presentation if I could not find any good images that worked with the text. Several of the slides describing Gandhi's early life also needed new images in order to follow alignment, the slide describing when Gandhi left for London needed a picture of him at the age when he left instead of the picture of an older Gandhi in London. On the slide that states that Gandhi became familiar with the Bible, the image was changed to a Bible instead of a random book. [|**Gandhi Slides Redesigned**] <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">View more <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">[|presentations] <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;"> from <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">[|mccreary87] <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">One of the major re-designs I made to this PowerPoint is re-arranging the slides so that they better follow the graphic design principle for Proximity. For instance, early on in the PowerPoint there is a slide with a poster activity for the audience and the next poster activity appears randomly at the end of the PowerPoint. This was an example of poor proximity and I now have the second poster activity following the first. I also made sure that the graphic design principle of repetition was followed by changing the background color and color of the text as well as the font so that it is all the same on each slide. In order to prevent redundancy in this PowerPoint, I changed the images on the slides titled "Der Fuehrer's Face" and "Reason and Emotion" that simply showed the title of the short a second time and replaced them with images that aligned with the text. [|**Revised WWII Propaganda**] <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">View more <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">[|presentations] <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;"> from <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">[|mccreary87] <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">Many changes needed to be made to this PowerPoint, as there were numerous violations of graphic design principles and cognitive load theory. The backgrounds were changes on the "Judaism in Television" and "Schinder's List" slides so that the text contrasted with the backgrounds properly. Also on the "Judaism in Television" slide the text was greatly reduced so that it would not split the attention of the audience. The fonts and colors on that slides were changed so that they followed repetition, and the only slide with different backgrounds in the PowerPoint are the slides that introduce the different categories of Judaism in the media, television and film. The images on the //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">Seinfeld //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">, Saturday Night Live, and Futurama slides were change so they better aligned with the text. Since the "Film vs. Television" slide was a redundant slide that simply repeated information already covered in the presentation, that slide was removed from the PowerPoint. [|**Redesigned Judaism and Media**] <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">View more <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">[|presentations] <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;"> from <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">[|mccreary87] <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">. <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">Link to top
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 24px;">Developing PowerPoint Presentations by Creating Visuals & Content **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 18px;">Example **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">Fire Ant Diagram ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">Fire Ant Diagram ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 24px;">Redesigned Slides: **

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">My plan for the implementation phase was to have the parents who created the PowerPoint presentations for their kids to either create new PowerPoint presentations or redesign the old ones in order for them to incorporate what I learned this semester. The parents would then present the new or redesigned PowerPoint presentations to their children with the hope that the new presentations will better keep their interest. I would then observe the presentation to see if their children are more or less attentive to the presentations. <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">Link to top
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 32px;">Implementation __**

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">My evaluation is completed in a number of ways. This includes having the learners take questionnaires to see if the learners can identify what graphic design principles and cognitive load principles are being used in the PowerPoint slides they view. With a live group this would be in the form of a handout, and online it would be a downloadable document that the learners would fill out and then email to me. There would also be a survey to see how effective the learners found the PowerPoint presentations to be at informing them on the material being explained as well as keeping their attention. Again, with a live group the survey would be a handout and online it would be a link to the survey builder website. <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">Link to top
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 32px;">Evaluation __**

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">Glazer, Ed. "Graphic Design Principles." __A Process for Web Design__. 15 April 2010. <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">[] <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">[|k-8 visuals] <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;"> k-8visual.infoSweller, John. "Implications of Cognitive Load Theory." //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">. Ed. Richard Mayer. Santa Barbara: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 19-30. <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">[|Visual Literacy] <span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">[|www.visual-literacy.org]
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 24px;">References __**