PowerPoint Presentations in the Classroom: Re-Evaluating the Genre

Since the late 1990s, Microsoft PowerPoint has become the expected presentation genre. However, several studies have demonstrated its many faults, such as the pre-formatted construction of discourse leading to the abuse of bullet point presentations, the limited format and size of slides that support minimum content and the ever-present risk of overwhelming viewers with too much text or data (Alley 2003, 2004, Robertshaw 2004, Gottlieb 1985, Keller 2003, Tufte 2003). Taking into consideration how the linguistic and visual elements, as well as the design and text organizations found in Power Point presentations have evolved in the last 20 years, the present paper analyses the negative effects that the default slide structure provided by Microsoft PPT, consisting of topic-subtopics and bullet points, has on the audience. The paper will then demonstrate the positive learning effects that the assertion evidence structure has on readers. The different retaining degree of three groups of undergraduate students are tested, after having exposed them to PPTs applying phrase headlines, phrase headlines and images or the assertion evidence structure.