News You Can Use

It's not worth getting animated over it

One of the continual challenges we face is raising community awareness about dyslexia and our Learning Centers. For this reason the ubiquitous PowerPoint presentation has become an important tool.

Many of us put significant time into developing presentations that convey our message and maintain the attention of our audiences. But a recent study suggests some of us may be overdoing it.

A fascinating study has been released in the International Journal of Innovation and Learning. This study tested the rates of information retention of PowerPoint presentations with and without animations. The animations they tested were those where each point came up one at a time. Groups were show automated presentations similar in every way except one included these animations.

The result - while both groups increased knowledge after viewing the two presentations, the presentations without animations garnered a 35% higher rate of information retention. It seems the mind had more time to absorb all the points if they were on the screen longer (a summary of the study is on the arstechnica site).

Conclusion - if you want people to better remember the story you're telling, hold off on the PowerPoint animations!

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