Ban PowerPoint

PowerPoint should be banned in the School of Business. I can’t speak for the other colleges of study at this university, but I am almost positive that VCU business students would agree this multimedia crutch is almost never utilized to its full potential in a lecture class.

In 30 minutes, any person off the street with basic computer ability can learn to produce 20 slides with the same skill to the level of a Ph.D. professor at this school. Over nine semesters, I have been forced to sit through thousands of these dry presentations. It would be a better idea to save me the time, just buy the book and PowerPoint presentations and call it higher education. VCU could even discount it, advertise on TV and rename the school ECPI (or some other important sounding acronym).

The computer has given us a lot of creative and innovative things over the past 50 years: improved military ordinance trajectory calculations, PhotoShop and Internet porn. At the same time a little piece of software included in the Microsoft Office package, called PowerPoint, has in my opinion broken the legs of higher education. Now, professors don’t even have to write on a white board. Instead, they can download a PowerPoint presentation to force feed us.

More than likely, the educators do not even take 20 minutes to make their own presentation. Instead, they just hand us the book-written presentation. I was under the impression master’s level and Ph.D. levels of education were about creation of knowledge, not just the regurgitation of what is in a book. I have even been taught in two different courses from the same PowerPoint presentations. Any second-year business student should understand the importance of competitive advantage. I don’t need two slides in two different 300 to 400 level courses presented with 40 minutes of filler lecture.

Coupled with Blackboard – another tool with endless opportunity

for creativity – we get PowerPoint presentations available online. Great, good idea. Now, not only do I not have to pay attention to anything other than the book and slides, I don’t even have to attend the class. In some cases, the only thing keeping students from just reading the book, not going to class and earning their A is the strict attendance policies provided from the wonderful administration of this school. Some people like this leniency in their lectures.

The university has a vast pool of human capital and some of the most intelligent minds in the state or even the country. Instead of which books premade presentations say are right, I would like to know what they think… You know, some soul in my education. I understand in the business world, presenting information in an easy manner such as PowerPoint is necessary. This doesn’t mean that straying from the normal is so bad. But instead of cookie-cutter lectures, would it take so much extra time to throw in a little creativity? The successful people that change their field are the people that think out of the box – the trendsetters.