Bulletpoints are potentially, the root of all evil. Bulletpoints are great for note-taking but should be banned everywhere else. Bulletpoints are scientifically proven to be bad for learning when used in presentations. The fact that you don’t know how to give a presentation without them is not a reason to keep using them. Guns don’t kill, bulletpoints do.
At the majority of scientific conferences, the supportive media is simply a bulletpoint list. This is then read out to the audience. What is interesting is that if the audience is canvassed they will tell you that they hate bulletpoints. The presenter believes the audience wants bulletpoints but they personally hate bulletpoints. This is the presentation paradox. I am wondering if the only way to stop this is that bulletpoints should be banned. I appreciate that is draconian but here’s the rub, knowing they are bad and hating doesn’t stop you using them. If we ban them, people might actually start changing their practice.
The science is unequivocal that bulletpoints don’t work. These are not small scale, simple trials of spurious value that can be easily dismissed but established, whole, textbook sized, psychological principles. Cognitive load theory explains that our brain will not allow us easily to do two things at the same time. Now, whilst you may be able to pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time, reading bulletpoints whist someone talks about something completely different is simply not possible. As an audience member, you will prioritise one, over the other because of cognitive load. You will read. As the bulletpoint is not a complete fact but an allusion to a fact or concept, there is further cognitive load required to unpack it. At the same time though there is an auditory input. This will be in conflict to the fact being read as reading is quicker than speaking. Worse, if there is a cognitive challenge that requires your reading to stop, retrieve and process, the auditory input is even more distracting and that takes further effort to block. This total cognitive load/overload leads to focus on only one input, reading. And that reading will not allowing processing or analysis or evaluation or transfer to memory. Your cognitive load is overwhelmed by bulletpoints.
The second principle is dual processing, that is having something visual that mirrors that which is being discussed. Talking about stopping at a stop sign whilst showing a stop sign on the screen. Unfortunately, what happens in a presentation is that the reader is already bulletpoints ahead of the speaker’s dual processing section and this simply returns to the issue of cognitive load. The audience is reading one bulletpoint whilst the presenter talks about another bulletpoint.
Whilst many will leap to defend the practice, usually because of the implications if this is correct, simply answer the following question. What three facts can you remember from the last presentation you received? Can you even remember the presentation? It is not because the presenter did not put in effort. It is not because you did not put in effort, if is because of cognitive load and the failure of dual processing brought about by the use of bulletpoints.
Simply because everyone does this, does not make it any more right that everyone contracting Covid. Simply because you don’t know a better way does not make it effective. Simply because you have never heard of the science does not stop the science being true. Bulletpoints do not work, worse than that, they actually inhibit understanding and learning. That is why they are the root of all evil. All those learning, inspiring and changing opportunities are lost, because of bulletpoints. Why shouldn’t we ban bulletpoints; we have banned the use of guns.