I don't know how common this is in other colleges/universities, but here in IIT, very 1 out of 3 people you see close to exam-time, would be staring steadily at slides (Microsoft PowerPoint Presentations), tailor-made for their courses.
No matter what the topic, these slides are almost alike - having bland custom animations shooting bulleted points on each mouse click, distasteful colors and fonts, and most importantly incomplete sentences.
How can anyone learn anything about any topic through a bunch of important words clubbed together?
Brevity might be the soul of wit, but it is definitely not of knowledge.
Have people lost all willingness to read?
If not, how can anyone substitute a book, with its structure, literature and flow to abominably-cut-down-summary in slides?
I can't. And I don't think very highly of people who do.
No matter what the topic, these slides are almost alike - having bland custom animations shooting bulleted points on each mouse click, distasteful colors and fonts, and most importantly incomplete sentences.
How can anyone learn anything about any topic through a bunch of important words clubbed together?
Brevity might be the soul of wit, but it is definitely not of knowledge.
Have people lost all willingness to read?
If not, how can anyone substitute a book, with its structure, literature and flow to abominably-cut-down-summary in slides?
I can't. And I don't think very highly of people who do.
Ermm.. To save time so that they can read something that's actually fruitful (assuming the all-pervasive disinterest in academics, of course)
ReplyDeleteDepends on the course. I'm damned if I have to mug RDC from a *book*.
ReplyDelete@Sanjoy: Initially, I thought it was dependent on the subject. Since we study Pure Math, we are bound to hate slides. But then I thought, almost every subject (except RDC ofcourse) must have something to be learnt in it. And even if people are mugging for exams, aren't books going to help them more than slides.
ReplyDelete@Achyut: Save time is fine. But to "read something that's actually fruitful"? fruitful = marks?
ReplyDeleteArre I meant something non-academic. But yeah, you're right - If I am interested in a subject, I would much rather read from a book.
ReplyDeleteS Sanyalamundo (BE) is the worst offender
ReplyDeleteslides and slides of big fat comic sans in navy blue, lime green, yellow and red
damn circuit diagrams that would keep flipping iteratively in some "peek-a-boo" fashion wherein he'd keep removing resistors and adding transistors with each step, making it nigh impossible to copy a diagram decently
(ignore the "amundo" part, I just didn't want his name to be google-searchable)
@Arvindamundo - :)
ReplyDeletewhat happened to the ole video lectures??!
ReplyDelete