ScienceDaily (Jan. 21, 2011) — Put down those science books and work at recalling information from memory. That's the shorthand take away message of new research from Purdue University that says practicing memory retrieval boosts science learning far better than elaborate study methods. "Our view is that learning is not about studying or getting knowledge 'in memory,'" said Purdue psychology professor Jeffrey Karpicke, the lead investigator for the study that appears January 20 in the journal Science. "Learning is about retrieving.

This talk explain best practices for using PowerPoint in an educational and training environment, based on the research that has been done in the field. (A list of references follows the handout.)

Topics covered are:
Why reading from slides is detrimental to learning
The damaging effect of unnecessary images
The solution
Points from Multimedia Learning by Richard E. Mayer
Research showing that animating text line by line is not helpful to learning
How to create clear graphs/charts

Johan Karremans couldn’t remember his own address when an attractive lady asked him at the end of a conversation. This Dutch psychologist had been so busy trying to impress her that his cognitive abilities were temporary exhausted. He decided to investigate this more closely and discovered man can’t think optimally after a conversation with a woman. The prettier the woman, the stronger the effect. With women this effect did not appear.