With my thirtieth birthday around the corner, there's no way I'm letting Old Person Syndrome get me now! This rarely diagnosed disorder is actually more common than you think: The CDC estimates that 70% of adults over the age of 25 are suffering from this disease and 29% of the remaining 30% are carriers for this lethal virus. Once infected, sufferers die a slow death of boredom and mindlessness, as their novelty-seeking muscles atrophy and their Beginner's Mind shrivels and fades.
When engaging in classroom preparation with a true Beginner's Mind, teachers not only use technology, but use it creatively and efficiently, thereby eliminating students' needs to send out tweets of boredom regarding their teacher's ineffective use of clickers.
But clickers work in conjunction with PowerPoint...Good luck getting students to suddenly wake up to engage in some active learning if your presentation reflects the typical symptomology of Old Person Syndrome. Common symptoms of the disease include an unhealthy fascination with animated slide transitions and a more-is-better mindset when it comes to slides. In other words, the Old Person Syndrome sufferer is still too enamored of the existence of PowerPoint to actually think about using it effectively.
We in the ancient halls of academia could learn something from the business world. Keep things snappy, attractive, and approach each lecture as if you're selling the idea to your class. I have been experimenting with this idea this semester, so each time I introduce a new learning theory I put myself in the mindset of a prototypical behaviorist, for example, and try to convince my education students that THIS is the idea they've been waiting for, the one that will make all their educational nightmares turn to pleasant dreams. The business magazine Inc. recently published this how-to article about creating an effective PowerPoint which I highly recommend. Replace "business model" with "theoretical model" and "marketing" with "research" and it might as well have been written for a professor with Old Person Syndrome.
One of the ideas in this summary is the 10/20/30 rule: 10 slides, 20 minutes, size 30 font (or bigger). This keeps the words to a minimum, both on the slide and coming out of your mouth. I'm going to experiment with this in my next lecture, in conjunction with my first time using clickers, so I'll let you know how it goes. Haven't started planning yet, but I'm feeling younger already :)
Great post. I really liked that article you linked on how to make a great powerpoint presentation. The idea of having a narrative is one that I hadn't thought about. Thank you for posting that.
ReplyDeleteOld Person syndrome - I love it. I, too, am staring 30 in the face, and I'm already experiencing the symptoms. The business power point model is a great idea. In my past lectures, the ones that worked the best always seemed to (unwittingly) take this approach. I'd like to say more but, given my early-onset Old Person syndrome, I better get to bad. It's after 10 PM, for crying out loud!
ReplyDeleteI love the old person syndrome! Is the 10/20/30 what you did in Denise's class last semester? I thought it was peekachoo or something. I can't remember, but I really liked the technique!
ReplyDeleteI'm in the social work program. In my research for a paper about effective interventions for addictions I read about Medical Aesthetics. The basic concept was that the previous paradigm is that doctors, their offices, and the whole experience is allowed to be unpleasant and the patients will just endure the misery.
ReplyDeleteThis researcher was suggesting a new paradigm that accepted that people are more likely to go, follow instructions, and receive more benefits from experience that are more pleasant. While a colonoscopy will never be anyone's favorite activity it empowered providers to embrase a better belief system about their work.
By doing this a lot of money could be saved in the long run because people would be more likely to get preventative medicine, or at least go to the doctor when the problem is small and manageable.
I also connect this concept to teaching. The Aesthetics of Teaching. It encouraged me to think about how I could make learning less painful and more aesthetically pleasing.
-Leslie
Peekachoo, tee-hee. I think you're going for Pecha Kucha, jwo :-) That's 20 slides, 20 seconds each. 10/20/30 is a similar idea, just different numbers. These are both good for instructors to consider, but also for student presentations. It's a little tougher to do than you think, though!
ReplyDelete@jwo, sherry is right---Pecha Kucha might be a whole 'nother blog post for me, so i refrained from mentioning it!
ReplyDelete@sandersm and @redlady--thanks!
@loggelogges--it's 5:30 pm now. guess you just finished dinner :)
Well, while I seem to be a bit older than you young'uns, I'd like to think I've been lucky enough to steer clear of the dreaded "Old Person Syndrome."
ReplyDeleteBut hey, I've seen it staring me in the face in far too many classrooms. Not so much with the fancy animations as the lack of spacing between bullet points ... and just a whole cornucopia of text, numbers, charts, and clip art. All on the same slide!
And as for your 10/20/30 rule? I'm with Dr. Clouser on that one. I just don't see how you could stretch a 50-minute lesson out with only 10 slides. But hey, if you can pull it off? More power to you! (Just make sure you share with me how you did it!)
Anyway, thanks for a fun-to-read post.