I abandoned using slides in presentations in Europe in the 1990s. Working in Asia, there was an expectation that there would be slides and if they were not used - and handed out to the audience - there was considerable criticism. In many cases, that persists. But in the 2000s, I reverted to presentations without slides which puts the onus on the audience to make notes. It's a policy I have extended to e-learning with intra-course Scenario pages and reinforcement for which note-taking is encouraged. It's why we chose against including a notepad in our e-learning system. My view was simple: I knew that the stuff I remembered best was the stuff I wrote down - even though my handwriting was so poor that, often, I couldn't read it back. The simple act of making notes locked information into my memory, even when I was doing it almost on autopilot whilst listening to what was being said. If it worked for me, I reasoned, it would work for everyone. New research by Hetty Roessingh, Professor...
