Audiences will naturally focus on PowerPoint slides when you project them. However, you can capture and maintain your students' attention by using the strategies such as the following:
- Be an engaging speaker. Use gestures, move around the room, make eye contact with the students, and modulate your voice to emphasize points.
- Limit the amount of words or visuals on your PowerPoint so that students will have to listen to you to learn the substance of the lecture. Remember that the use of bulleted lists in PowerPoint often omits important aspects of a lecture--such as the connections among, and significance of, bulleted ideas and data.
- Ask the students questions throughout the lecture to get them engaged and thinking about what you are presenting.
- Mute the picture when you have an important point that you want students to pay attention to or when you want them to focus on what you are writing on the chalkboard, which offers a more interactive medium for displaying information.
To learn additional strategies for using PowerPoint and other visual aids effectively, see Improving Presentation Style.