Cognitive and Affective Outcomes of PowerPoint Slides Usage in the Classroom

One of the most widely used information presentation software is PowerPoint. This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of PowerPoint slides on the learners’ cognitive and affective outputs. Affective indicators have included the student opinions about the effects of these methods on improving note-taking, improving understanding and improving Teaching - learning process. Retention, understanding and application of the learned material were considered as well as cognitive indicators. An educational psychology achievement test was used to measure the cognitive outputs and an attitude scale was used to measure the affective outputs. Research design used in this study is a semi-experimental with pretest and posttest by compared groups. The study subjects were 73 students of teacher training Azerbaijan University who were chosen by available sampling method. Results indicated that the use of PowerPoint software hasn’t a significant impact on the cognitive parameters but that has a significant effect on the students’ opinions about improving note taking. This inefficiency due content centered and linearity nature of PowerPoint software. Using concept map software that in which the structure of knowledge is emphasized was introduced as an alternative approach.