ERIC Number: EJ798417
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2004
Pages: 4
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1080-5699
EISSN: N/A
Working through PowerPoint: A Global Prism for Local Reflections
Connor, Michael; Wong, Irene F. H.
Business Communication Quarterly, v67 n2 p228-231 2004
Student presentations have assumed such prominence at the Nanyang Business School (NBS), Singapore, that business communication academics have begun conducting workshops on presentations for other faculty members. In addition to guidance on assessing student presentations, the authors offer theoretical and practical perspectives on PowerPoint, which most of their colleagues have been using in business and education for years. However, in developing useful approaches to these sessions and from discussions during them, they realized that they have been addressing larger issues that PowerPoint reflects prismatically. They now think that they may have found, in PowerPoint's problematic centrality to business and education everywhere, certain avenues for addressing these global communication concerns within their local pedagogic context. Their workshop participants have the usual anxieties about PowerPoint. Its use demands the simplification and reduction of content, and it can cloud reasoning. It can promote style over substance. And its ubiquitous use across business, technical, and educational communities threatens to flatten and homogenize discourse, with a loss of richness. From this interfaculty collaboration at NBS, the business communication group derives at least two benefits. First, it strengthens their growing sense that communication is deeply integrated in most aspects of business, from both practical and theoretical perspectives. Second, it helps them understand the kind of dialogue that can productively engage both faculty and students.
Descriptors: Business Communication, Global Approach, Workshops, Foreign Countries, College Faculty, Curriculum Development, Visual Aids, Teaching Methods, College Students, Teacher Student Relationship
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Singapore
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A