NUTSHELL NOTES "Teaching tips in a nutshell" - The University of Colorado at Denver's One-page Newsletter for Teaching Excellence

Black and white word overheads are the fastest and easiest visual aids to make. They are particularly useful and require only a computer with a word processor, clear 8.5" x 11" transparency film, and a printer and/or copy machine to produce. Text used in the overheads can be saved for later updating or for reduced scaling for handouts. A crisp sans-serif font (Figure 1) in 18-point type is generally a good choice for lettering of word slides for presentations.

Because a class is very receptive at the start, a good opening practice is to stress the major concept of your session with a word slide. Show it and inform the class how you are going to lead them to understand the concept. They will have the class objective before them and a forecast of how they will reach it—a sterling start!

Benchmark word slides provide a progressive series of topics/points, each marked with a bullet or number. Use benchmark word slides to assist students in following the progress of your lectures. This helps students to stay with complex material and to better understand it by engaging one issue at a time.

Any visual aid worth making must be clearly readable by your audience or students. The classroom itself is an often-overlooked factor. The most crucial room characteristics are size and lighting. Try one of your overheads before class and check it yourself from the back row. In size, the room must have a large enough screen to permit clear viewing of projected text from these back rows. In lighting, the room should be bright enough to allow students to take notes and ask questions, but dark enough to allow use of the chosen projection equipment. Many of us teach night classes in rooms where lights are all wired into a single switch. This all-or-nothing situation is typical of rooms designed by people who don't teach in them. We can sometimes cheaply mitigate the design flaw in small rooms by using a small desk lamp placed in a strategic spot like a back corner, so that the room can get sufficient light that does not come from a distracting light source.

A blank, lighted screen itself draws attention, so turn off the overhead projector when you are not actively employing it. Finally, take time to physically point to key words and phrases on your visual aids as you speak. This will help adjust your presentation pace into one that can be better followed by students.