Do Students Learn Better with Pecha Kucha, an Alternative Presentation Format?

Abstract

Oral presentation assignments help students develop and engage multiple learning skills. In the process of preparing a presentation, students search and evaluate information (evidence-based engagement), decide whether to include it (content relevancy), organize information in an engaging manner (audience engagement), adhere to the presentation instructions (logistics), and attempt to appear credible (credibility). The final product is often a 15-minute PowerPoint presentation. In this study, we introduced students to the Pecha Kucha presentation format: 20 slides shown for 20 seconds each. While previous studies claimed that Pecha Kucha is pedagogically superior to traditional formats, particularly in the presentation and communication competence, its impacts on learning have not been examined. This study, which involved students in three classes, was designed to do so. All the students presented twice in a semester, but in one class, the first presentation was in Pecha Kucha and second in the traditional format and in the other two classes, the first was in the traditional format and second in Pecha Kucha. Five decision-making categories were assessed: evidence-based engagement, content relevancy, audience engagement, logistics, and credibility. Also assessed were the students’ confidence levels in presentation. The statistically significant differences between these two formats mostly reflected the intentional selection of presentation material to meet the time constraint of the Pecha Kucha format. However, all were slightly more confident in presentation after the second one. Students also reported that they preferred listening to Pecha Kucha than to traditional PowerPoint presentations.