For a number of years, I taught PBL or Problem Based Learning to small groups of medical students.

The stated purpose of the class was to allow junior students (M1, M2, and M3) the opportunity to analyze a medical case, and work as a team to investigate different aspects of the patient’s problem.

I found it was also a very good way to train students in informal lecture techniques.

Each week, every student in the group was to research a specific topic related to the patient’s problem, and then present the information to the group of 8 to 10 students.

Some of these presentations could be quite elaborate, with multimedia PowerPoint slides.

The problem was, the presentation style was overcoming the content.

The other problem was that if the PowerPoint projector were ever not working, the students would generally be at a loss as to how to proceed.

After watching some of these presentations, I intervened to improve the student’s ability to present informally.

The first thing I did was to ban PowerPoint and force the students to present things on a blackboard, on a one-page handout, or on a paper towel taped to the wall. They could use notes, but they couldn’t read their notes aloud to the other students. This made them completely engage with their topics, since they needed to know the material well enough to present it without prompts.

I emphasized simplicity in language, tone, and drawings. A simple drawing is better than a complicated one. Using single words to represent entire sentences or thoughts is more effective than placing the entire sentence in front of the listeners.

Some had to overcome the tendency to draw anatomically correct organs, when simple stick figures or crude representations of organs would have worked fine. The students ultimately grasped that their carefully crafted drawing of the four chambers of a heart was mostly wasted time, when a simple heart shape with a cross in it would work well for illustrations during an informal talk, and took a fraction the amount of time.

The students came to understand that in their professional careers, a few of their presentations would be formal (PowerPoint based), but most of their presentations would be informal. They would be making informal presentations every day to their patients, the families, their colleagues and support staff. They grew to value the informal presentation.

Another emphasis was on brevity. Shorter is almost always better than longer. The very first decision one makes in an informal presentation is how much time to use. The allotted time determines the depth and content of the presentation.

With the M1s and M2s, I had a rule that whenever they mispronounced a medical word, I would interrupt them and correct it. The student needed to repeat the word back to me, spoken correctly, and then we could move on. I explained to the students that over the course of their medical school education, they would need to learn over 10,000 new words, and the pronunciations weren’t necessarily obvious. So I wasn’t too worried about them not saying the word correctly; it’s just that I didn’t want the mispronunciation to be perpetuated. I also didn’t want their fellow students to think that the mispronounced word was correct. So I would correct the student instantly, they would say it back correctly, and we would continue.

Some students were reluctant to give up their PowerPoint presentations. Many of the presentations were excellent, and highly entertaining. The problem is…entertainment is not the same as education, and for informal lectures, I wanted the students to learn to educate, not to entertain. It’s very, very difficult to do both at the same time.