Online video presentations

Presentation applications are increasing in popularity and providing powerful tools for creation and sharing of instructional materials and accessible information in visual format. MS PowerPoint, for example, has become the dominant presentation tool because it is both readily available and easy-to-use by instructors (Grabe & Grabe 2007). It allows instructors to create and manipulate presentations in a wide variety of contexts that can enhance student’s interest and engagement (Mills & Roblyer, 2006). In addition, it helps instructors clearly identify the main points of a topic or activity while still providing the details through presentation (Loisel & Galer, 2004). Instructors can incorporate multiple types of media formats (e.g., diagram, photo, drawing, sound and video) that cannot be easily integrated together into one single medium. Learners are also attracted to PowerPoint because of graphical, transactional, aesthetic and interactive features it provides. However, in order to be successful, a presenter needs to guide the audience through the presentation, keep their interest, and attract their attention (Chiasson & Gutwin, 2005). Although there is interest in the utility of PowerPoint, it is used only by the teacher inside classrooms and needs to be paired with use of an LCD projector and large screen. In other words, PowerPoint slide content and visual features are not substitute for guidance a teacher should deliver. If the students are not seeing and listening to the teacher, then learning from the slides in isolation will be less valuable or impossible. Regardless of such concerns and problems related to the use of PowerPoint, it is no longer an issue of whether to use PowerPoint or not.