As many of you likely know, one of my recent blog posts concerned ways to provide PowerPoint slides to students. However, I didn’t discuss whether or not we should even be doing that, or whether we should be providing them before or after we use them in class.
A primary factor in all of this is that students want the slides. They even demand them in many cases, but we must, as instructors, think about what is best for their learning processes. And that “best” might vary considerably between instructors, as well as between lessons/lectures.
In general, I tend to side against providing slides to students before class (or in the form of handouts during class) because it makes an already passive form of learning even more passive by relieving them of the necessary effort of taking notes, or of even listening.
Plus, an important step in the learning process for students is the decision of which part of what you’ve said to write down. And the act of writing it down is perhaps even more important-they are translating your language into their own, encoding it into their minds and memories.
Most students, however, prefer to get the slides ahead of time because it’s easier. At least until it’s time to show what they’ve learned.