The effects of text slide format and presentational quality on learning in college lectures

The traditional advice for using text slides is to limit text on each slide to a maximum of about six or seven lines and a comparable number of words per line. But is the advice - never solidly based on research - really as good as it sounds? And does the way in which it is delivered - reading stiffly from the paper or presenting more lively - affect the effectiveness of the visual support? In a large scale experiment three types of presentation were compared. They differed in the number of slides and in the amount and format of the information presented on each slide. The presentations were presented in two different ways that differed in the amount of eye contact with the audience and in intonation. The findings of the study indicate that the content and format of the text slides had a significant effect on the learning of the participants, but that communication style has a compensating effect.