Why Do Nursing Instructors Rely So Heavily On PowerPoints To Teach?

[SarahMaria]

I have completed 3 semesters of Nursing School and so far, every lecture instructor has used PowerPoints in the classroom to teach. This method has been used probably 99% of the time. The PowerPoints are provided ahead of time for download on a website, so students can bring them to class. Then, the instructor projects the PowerPoint on a screen and READS it at us for the lecture period (3-4 hours). Occasionally, there is a student question or the instructor may add something.

Why is this type of "teaching" popular? Why am I spending money to go to class to have somebody read to me when I am fully capable of reading the same material in the comfort of my own home? It seems lazy and insulting to my intelligence.

Any thoughts? Does anyone else have this experience? Does anyone benefit from this method of instruction?

[AOx1]

Why would you assume that I'm not the one speaking? I am the one who guides and moderates any discussions. And as I mentioned, the huge majority of my students give this format extremely high rankings. It is all about tailoring the class so that the majority of the students love the learning experience. And no, one couldn't just do the case study at home. These aren't the canned case studies from a book or video. The ones I present use actual patients, where the students and I discuss prioritization and care needs. The patient is present in the classroom.

The videos are also of real patients who have signed releases to be taped. I don't release them for students to take home.

[parrothead36]

if i didn't know better, i would have thought that we were in the same class!!!! my instructor did the exact same thing as far as reading the powerpoints to our class.

[CuriousMe]

Why would you assume that I'm not the one speaking? I am the one who guides and moderates any discussions. And as I mentioned, the huge majority of my students give this format extremely high rankings. It is all about tailoring the class so that the majority of the students love the learning experience. And no, one couldn't just do the case study at home. These aren't the canned case studies from a book or video. The ones I present use actual patients, where the students and I discuss prioritization and care needs. The patient is present in the classroom.

The videos are also of real patients who have signed releases to be taped. I don't release them for students to take home.

You may be speaking but guiding and moderating aren't providing content. I don't want to have to wait for the class to get around to the point through a guided discussion. I'm not paying to listen to them try and discover the point. These aren't literature classes here, where we're analyzing the authors intended motivation for a specific character. These are nursing classes. We do plenty of small group work, in all of our simulation groups as well as weekly in our clinical seminars....we don't need them in theory.

I have no doubt this format works well for some others (otherwise, it wouldn't be done at all), it would be nightmare for me. I don't need help interacting with the material....I do plenty of interacting with the material outside of class (it's called studying). I prefer Professor's who teach (and no, as stated earlier, I don't consider skits, videos or small group discussions to be teaching). So, I should clarify...I prefer Professors to teach via a well organized lecture. Add all that information that the book can't or doesn't give us. Help us connect topics to what we've learned already.

I've never done a "canned" case study before (well, I've read them in the text book, but that's not what we use for class). Ours are created by our faculty and tweaked each year to improve them. It sounds like the only reason yours couldn't be done at home is that you mandate (by design) that they be done in class. You could provide the info they'd need to do it at home, you just don't choose to structure the activity that way.

We have a course website that only faculty and members or that class have access to. We access streaming videos (including some with patient content) from that site....no one needs to "take them home."

You mentioned that you feel your style of presenting information to require more of the student....I say it requires far less. You're trying to mandate engagement of the students by the kind of activities, instead of having it be the students responsibility to be engaged with the material.....not the skits and movies and whatever hijinks go on. I don't need to be entertained through class, I don't need a traveling carnival act....I just want to learn.

Just a comment from an old student...

[HeartsOpenWide, RN]

I had power points throughout my entire nursing education except my last semester. I had an old school nurse who had her PhD in education and did case studies. At first I was scared of the new teaching style but ended up learning more that semester than every other semester. I think most power points come with the teachers editions of the text books, they do not even have to make them. Many nursing instructors are also working and many are working on their PhD, at least that was my experience, so teaching was their second or third priority.

[AOx1]

I am not trying to "mandate" anything, or that students learn in only one given way. I try to balance many diverse styles, as my students are diverse. I came here to try to answer, from a faculty perspective, why we might/might not choose to deliver material in a given manner. It works for my students. It clearly doesn't work for you. There is no need to call a caring faculty member's efforts a traveling carnival act.

[ImThatGuy, BSN, RN]

Do we really think group activities are educational in the context of the material being covered, do we believe that group activities foster team work and cooperation, or is there some other motive?

I think everything I mentioned above is a component. It was certainly part of the dogma of some graduate education courses I took as well as innumerable teachers's workshops. Granted, I'm not interested enough to participate in any quantitate research in effort to contest the above via publication.

Sadly, I've worked and volunteered in a myriad of environments, and I can't help but think that classroom group projects completely fail to foster team work and cooperation. I also don't think that a lot more is learned in a group. Most students (myself included, particularly in my past) are all about quantity. They want to hastily cover the material, make their good (or passing) grade, and finish. I think a group activity, from observation and experience, merely promotes haste because groups of students, at all ages, sit around and talk about random junk while one well-meaning student urges them along stating something like, "We've got to hurry up and get this done." Notice the "hurry." They then jot down some thoughts, and quickly return to socializing with often one student, usually the usher of the group, dumping ideas that others typically respond to with "That sounds good."

Groups are also handy instances in which the instructor, at all levels, has little to do besides mingle the room asking, "How are we doing?"

Just some passing thoughts. This particular thread has really gotten my goat because I'm such a critical student these days.

[Despareux]

I happen to love lectures, but I am not a fan of powerpoints. I prefer an instructor who lectures while drawing out concepts on the board. And I love when a student asks the questions that make you think.

The instructors I have had, who do put up powerpoints, don't really use them. Seems as if they're up more for the students who prefer to use powerpoints.

[~Mi Vida Loca~RN, ASN, RN]

I wish more students felt this way! I sum up the most important points, explain the difficult concepts with a skit or comparison, then we jump into application (ex- watch a video and assess the patient, have a guest speaker with the disorder we're covering, use a case study, have a debate or discussion, etc). After that we wrap up with a few minutes of NCLEX practice questions.

Yet every semester, I get a few complaints. One was "Why can't we just use PowerPoint? I shouldn't have to write so much in class!" and another wrote "I just want the teacher to tell me what's on the test. I shouldn't have to read on my own time."

The majority of students report that they love actively participating, but a small but vocal minority gets quite furious if I don't present it in a small, easily spoonfed bundle.

To be honest, the students learn so much more with active learning. It takes a TON of time for the instructor to design great learning activities. It is frustrating when you go above and beyond and do your best, only to hear the same complaint: "I want PowerPoints! I don't want to read, I want you to tell me."

I wish I could just fill my class up with motivated learners who want to work! Many of you sound like a teacher's dream students :)

At the end of the day you can't please everyone and someone will always find a reason to complain. Those that don't like PP complain, so than you get an active teacher like you are describing and than people that want PP complain, apparently it doesn't matter if not everyone learns the same way, as long as they are being taught in the way THEY learn best. It's a no win situation. It would be nice if people could respect that fact they not everyone learns the same and they can't have it the way THEY want all the time. It would also be nice to find a good balance to touch all types of learners. You sound like you try to come close to that.

[CeilingCat, ASN, RN]

It's a lazy teacher's way of getting through a class without doing much. Seems like none of them understand the concept that PowerPoint is just to highlight main topics or show a diagram -- all my instructors also use them to read from, line by line, blah blah blah.

Next time you're stuck in a PowerPoint class pretend it's the teacher from Peanuts going "wah wah wah wahwah".

Be comforted you're not alone. In my nursing classes, the discussion is mainly a student asking a question and the snarky instructor saying "what, didn't you read the book? it's in your reading." A % of students stopped coming to class because we can read the powerpoints to ourselves just as well at home. The instructors got angry and banned us from sharing class recordings or notes with someone who could not attend, no matter why they weren't there. Is it right? I don't think so. But as long as there are multi-year waiting lists for the nursing school admissions, they can pretty much do whatever they darn well please.

[CuriousMe]

I am not trying to "mandate" anything, or that students learn in only one given way. I try to balance many diverse styles, as my students are diverse. I came here to try to answer, from a faculty perspective, why we might/might not choose to deliver material in a given manner. It works for my students. It clearly doesn't work for you. There is no need to call a caring faculty member's efforts a traveling carnival act.

My apologies, the carnival comment wasn't meant to be disrespectful....but more one of frustration. I completely understand that Prof's are trying to do their best. Sometimes it really feels like that style works to entertain us more than teach us...very frustrating and distracting when I'm trying to learn.

I replied because I was trying share that those who don't benefit from the more non-traditional teaching styles aren't all looking to be spoon fed, some of us just really feel limited by all the "activities" in class.

The flip-side of this is, our Prof's are fantastic lecturers. They use PowerPoint, but only as an outline, with visuals included (images/graphs) and really expound on the topics at hand. I learn so much from them, very rich experiences.

Thankfully, I've only had one professor, (she only team-taught one course--so a very small percentage of my program) who preferred your style of teaching. For me, whatever material she was supposed to cover I had to figure out from the reading and asking other Professors for clarification when needed, as her classroom activities were more cryptic than illuminating.

As far as different learning styles, it seems that to get this far in our educations, everyone should have figured out what they need to do to learn in a traditional lecture setting. Why throw a curve-ball at this point?

[HyperSaurus, RN, BSN]

You may be speaking but guiding and moderating aren't providing content. I don't want to have to wait for the class to get around to the point through a guided discussion. I'm not paying to listen to them try and discover the point. These aren't literature classes here, where we're analyzing the authors intended motivation for a specific character. These are nursing classes. We do plenty of small group work, in all of our simulation groups as well as weekly in our clinical seminars....we don't need them in theory.

You mentioned that you feel your style of presenting information to require more of the student....I say it requires far less. You're trying to mandate engagement of the students by the kind of activities, instead of having it be the students responsibility to be engaged with the material.....not the skits and movies and whatever hijinks go on. I don't need to be entertained through class, I don't need a traveling carnival act....I just want to learn.

Just a comment from an old student...

You say this, but have you ever experienced a lecture like this done well? My prof in peds never used power points except to provide diagrams. We did case studies. She did guide and moderate--First, she'd provide necessary info on the condition being studied (S/sx, labs/diagnostics, treatments, prevention if possible), then we'd get to the questions, where participation was encouraged. However, if we answered wrong or were going down the wrong track, she would explain why that was incorrect. She never let the discussions meander too far off track, and thus we got a lot of workable information each period, without being exactly spoon fed.

[ImThatGuy, BSN, RN]

I'm going to go ahead and broach my complaint. Sure, I hate being read to from a ppt, but I'd hate being read to from the book as well. All that said, what gets me steamed is the absence of supplemental information coming from the teacher and the frequent inability to answer questions and/or expound on the topic.