Harvard Just Discovered that PowerPoint is Worse Than Useless | Inc.com
▻https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/harvard-just-discovered-that-powerpoint-is-worse-than-useless.html
Intuitively, we all know that PowerPoint is a horrible time-suck. (Admit it: don’t you groan inside when the first slide pops up?) And anecdotally, the world’s top entrepreneurs (like Jeff Bezos, Jack Dorsey and Mark Cuban) avoid it like the proverbial plague.
At least two peer-reviewed studies buttress the anecdotes.
A study conducted at the University of New South Wales in 2007 by John Sweller (the psychologist who invented Cognitive Load Theory) found that showing audiences the same words that are being spoken reduces, rather than increases, audience comprehension.
In other words, when you throw up bullet points and then run through them, you’re guaranteeing that whatever you say will be quickly forgotten. Not because you’re bloody boring, but because people can’t read and listen at the same time.
The entire concept of PowerPoint is apparently misbegotten, according to a recent Harvard study cited in Forbes, which found that
“PowerPoint was rated (by online audiences) as no better than verbal presentations with no visual aids. (Ouch.)”
Consider that for a second. You audience will be just as happy with your presentation if you do it without your slides. Which means the time you spent building the deck was basically wasted.
