The slides carry the argument. They are not the argument.

THE PROBLEM

Students assigned a fifteen-slide presentation produce fifteen slides of topic-organized bullets. The bullets are accurate. The slides are organized. There is no argument. The students understood they were supposed to produce slides. What they did not understand is that the slides are a medium, not the deliverable. The deliverable is an argument. Most students have never been taught the difference.

WHAT SLIDES ARE ACTUALLY FOR

Slides do two things in an argument-centered presentation: they provide visual evidence that advances the claim, and they serve as navigation markers for the audience. Neither function requires bullets. A slide showing a graph while the speaker explains what it establishes uses both functions well. A slide listing five facts in bullets while the speaker reads them aloud uses neither.

THE BULLET POINT PROBLEM

Bullets remove connections. Argument depends on logical sequence and the causal links between ideas. Bullets treat each item as independent and additive. They cannot carry reasoning.

Bullets collapse both channels. Mayer’s multimedia learning research (2001): visual and auditory channels have separate capacity. Putting the argument in bullets and reading them aloud uses both channels for the same content. Neither channel adds anything.

Bullets replace the spoken argument. When the slide contains the argument, the speaker is a delivery mechanism for text the audience can read faster without her.

WHAT ARGUMENT-CENTERED STRUCTURE LOOKS LIKE

The opening slide states the claim. Body slides each advance a specific aspect of the argument, each carrying a visual the spoken content develops. The sequence serves the argument, not the topic outline. A student with a specific claim can organize slides in service of it. A student without a claim has nothing for the slides to serve.

PRACTICAL STARTING POINTS
  • 1. Require slides to show rather than tell. Each slide presents a visual (data, image, diagram, key quote) that the spoken argument interprets.
  • 2. Ban bullets from body slides. Forces students to identify what visual evidence they need rather than what information they have.
  • 3. Require a one-sentence argument caption for each body slide. One sentence connecting the slide to the overall claim. Forces the evidence-to-argument connection.
  • 4. Score argument structure separately from design and delivery. Does this slide do specific work in the development of the claim? That question should be on the rubric.

Sources: Mayer, Multimedia Learning (2001); Atkinson, Beyond Bullet Points (2007); Hillocks, Teaching Argument Writing (2011)