Making a Better PowerPoint

Using Powerpoint is central to giving presentations in college. When an instructor assigns a presentation project, it logically follows you will present it with a PowerPoint. Making a PowerPoint involves more than putting words and maybe a graphic or two on a set of slides for showing to the class. Powerpoints need to be effective to get your message across clearly and accurately, which means you have to consider design that will make an impression on your audience. There are many resources out there on how to make effective PowerPoints. In fact a business consultant, Dave Paradi, has written nine books about making effective presentations. Unfortunately, giving a PowerPoint presentation for the business world is a little different than for an educational purpose. We will guide you through the process in this module. Despite that admonition, your college presentation experience will give you a foundation for doing PowerPoint presentations in your career world after graduation.

A Little Background

Forethought, Inc. of Silicon Valley, developed PowerPoint in 1987 for compatibility with Macintosh Apple products. Immediately Microsoft saw potential. Microsoft soon purchased PowerPoint and coverted it into a corporate unit, which it reamains today. Although intended for business presentations, by the mid-1990s it was found useful for other endeavors, among which are:

schools and universities
religious worship
legal arguments in courtrooms
scientific meetings
military briefings
government meetings and briefings
diplomatic negotiations.

By 2016, the popularity of PowerPoint prompted Wired UK writer Russell Davies to note, "PowerPoint is everywhere."

Tips for Better PowerPoints

For the purposes of ANTH-F116 First-Year Seminar, follow some simple rules to keep your presentations simple. There is no need for fancy graphics, colors or motions, as those could distract from your message. With experience you can use such add-ons for more sophisticated presentations. But at this point follow this rule: less is better.

Keep it simple

PowerPoint is not a teleprompter used by speakers in public venues. Avoid wordy text the audience has to read, which draws them away from your oral remarks. The text should be talking points, which are topics that require oral explanation or invite discussion from your audience. Typically these are designed as bullet points, or short phrases that summarize your idea and are easily comprehended by the listener.

Here's an example from the instructor's upper-level 400 class, Food and Culture. Notice the only sentence is a short phrase in the headline. The rest is a subject category, Gender Division of Labor, describing the categories to follow, i.e. Men and boys and Women and children. Beneath those is a list, each of which as a bulleted item.

PPt. bullet-1.png

On the other don't be too brief. The PowerPoint could have been written below. It has too many bullet points that convey little meaning to the audience.

PASTORAL SOCIETIES

Gender
Division of Labor
Men and boys
raise animals
inheritance (patrilineal)
polygyny
Women and children
domestic duties
gardening
fields in agropastoralism

By the way here is an image of a pastoral society in Kenya.