About powerpoints presentations in teachings

Dear all,

when I was involved in preparing the UCLAN´s Mechatronics and Statistical course, I was told that we had to prepare Powerpoints for classes. Those were the rules and every lecturer was bowing dearly to that so-called rule.

The students, especially the ones from the stats course coming from the areas of business and computer science, really stressed that they would only value teachers following that principle. Of course, that it made their life much easier:
- no need to take notes in class
- the exam content would only be found in the notes
- finally, no real need to come to class, especially when the lecturers would not make an effort to be appealing.

We all know the huge amount of time in preparing these powerpoints presentations. I remember the time spent on finding images either through scans or copy from the web. Even the time spent on the web can be quite long. Then comes the problems of copyrights (but do they really exist ? and can they be inforced in countries like China or India where so many infrigements occur). The honest gents will start making their own images and we all know how long it takes even with good profiency on CAD programs. I remember seing so many lecturers collapsing under the workload and saying that there was too much work.

All of this in order to be capable to attract students. We all know that it is definetely diffcult to attract students ın engineering in a country that no longer believes in the industry (thanks to Tatcher who dıg the grave of the British civil industry). 

In France, these problems did not exist before the Sarkozy´s reform. The engineering schools were applying quotas and selecting the students with a difficult entry exams based on their intellectual ability. You had then motivated students and they had to show their capacity not the other way around like it is in the UK. In France, too many lecturers are not making sufficient effort to give interesting teachings.

Of course, we have to evaluate the lecturers in their sense of pedagogy. The way to do it is surely not how it is made in the Albion. Can we determine which approach leads to the preparation of the best fit engineers ?

In Turkey, the lecturers refuse to prepare powerpoints presentations advocating that it does not promote students work. Moreover, the students come in classrooms and they sleep throughout since they just sit and wait to get the documents. There is no incentive to stay aware.

I do believe that if the students have to write their own notes from the information given on the white boards by lecturers, they learn already much more. Then, if they have to review their notes and try exercises at home, they will complement further their understanding of the knowledge.  

Key points :

- lecturers should avoid attitudes that generate dependencies
- they have to be active in class by writiıng, interacting  and so forth
- they have to complement with activities and studies at home
- avoid the idea of rereading professor´s notes, the students should reread their own notes
- forcing for student attendance is not the right attitude since it does not developp the sense of responsibility

My last question : are the students at age 20 to young minded ? (being the result of the education received in the family which does not promote the sense of independance required to have good engineers)

Luc