Taking a Professional Development Course? Burn the PowerPoint Handouts!

I just finished delivering my umpteenth Project Management course at The University of Akron. I'm not 100% sure but I think this one edged me well beyond the 200th professional development course for the new millennium.

This particular class was a pretty good bunch - 19 individuals; mostly adult learners; about half of the group possessed a pretty good project management background; about half of the rest had virtually no project background; and the remaining handful varied in experience. These folks pushed my delivery techniques up about six notches beyond the normal course composition due to their widely varied experience and relative interest. But... I think I hurt their feelings. Here's why.

I've been noticing for nearly a decade that students are becoming more and more attracted to PowerPoint list presentations and almost frighteningly addicted to PowerPoint Handouts. (You know? That stack of 3 to a page images of my presentation slides along with lines to take notes) A significant part of the perception seems to be that, if you do not present using PowerPoint (or one of its little brothers), you do not know how to teach (I'll get to this in another post). Even more chilling is the attitude that, if you don't hand out detailed notes pages (based on your PowerPoint) you are doing something wrong. (That's what I want to cover here.)

Well, (OOPS...) My PowerPoints display minimal information and (GASP...) I don't like PowerPoint handout stacks. Here's why...

When I deliver a course that includes PowerPoint handouts, I consistently notice that the students don't take their own notes. Why should they? I've already written out all the information for them in the handouts. I've also noted, again consistently, that when I ask questions in the presence of handouts, students can't seem to respond with their own unique thoughts. Instead they fire back answers based on simply looking at the following slides in the handout stack. Easy as pie to learn when you need not think your own thoughts and you can peek ahead to see the line of discussion. The amount of learning going on in these scenarios is more closely focused on telling me what they think I want to hear than on what's genuinely in their heads.

On the other hand, when I teach without benefit of the PowerPoint handouts, students write voluminous notes. They also ask unique questions and respond to mine with answers from their own perspectives - their own experiences. They process what they're learning and apply it to their own realities. Learning genuinely happens in these classrooms and everyone benefits. In this environment, not only do the students stay mentally alert but they frequently pull me up to new perspectives and enable me to answer more complex questions while building new ideas into the next course.

So... I'm torn. Deliver courses with PowerPoint handouts or leave the handouts off the resource list? In terms of learning theory I know students retain more information longer when they have to listen and transfer the concepts in their minds into their own handwriting and jot them down. Involving the optimal number of senses in the delivery is without a doubt the way to go to deliver value. However, there are two interesting problems with all this: First - Students who have grown used to the PowerPoint experience will hammer the instructor on the evaluations if they don't get their handouts. Second - The university departments for which I've worked become upset when instructors don't deliver those vital handouts to students.

Lately I've been consuming the fruit punch and handing students the PowerPoint slide deck pages for their notes and my evaluations are way up but I'm not comfortable with the learning. Interesting dichotomy...