Is PowerPoint an eLearning Tool?

The idea of considering Powerpoint as an ideal eLearning tool is highly disputed. The arguments over this roughly fall into two categories—people who really appreciate Powerpoint as a rapid eLearning tool, and people who think that it’s nothing more than a tool to create presentations or just loads of page turning content.

The value of Powerpoint can be understood by inspecting the requirements of the organization which is using it as an elearning tool. Any good instructional designer would agree that the success of an elearning course largely depends on its interactivities and their effectiveness. Turning pages and pages of content in a Powerpoint course can bore a learner and thus deter him from attaining the objectives of the course.
Also Powerpoint fails to be visually effective if one tries to deliver a Web Based Training or WBT. As far as Instructor Lead Training (ILT) is concerned, Powerpoint can complement very well and produce good results. However, we are also talking about asynchronous courses here. If Powerpoint is that ineffective, why is it so popular?
Say, you have to deliver a course on time and you have limited resources at hand. The content also is perishable. At such crossroads, Powerpoint can be a good tool for rapid elearning development. Organizations with limited budgets and resources or a comparatively lesser importance to their courses can successfully use Powerpoint. It is like you are already using what is available at the moment. The next time you choose any of the authoring tools, consider the following factors:
· Size of company
· Number of clients
· Competition
· Key Clients
· Size and scope of project
· Desired output formats
· Platform support
· Testing capabilities
· Standards conformance
· Tracking capabilities
· LMSs

Powerpoint is also easy to use and can be a very good tool to create storyboards and especially visual storyboards. While creating sequences and basic layouts, it can prove to be effective. Thus even before the course is created, it is possible to see and have an idea of how it might look as the final deliverable. A lot of raw material received by course developers can also be in the form of Powerpoint.
There are also various ways of using Powerpoint effectively to create a course. For example, third party Powerpoint plug-ins are available which help enhance the quality of the courseware. Good rapid interactivity tools exist which help provide finesse to courses created in Powerpoint. We can think that SMEs are unable to create courses for us but it might be possible to transform the material created by them on Powerpoint into meaningful courses using the tools available. One can add assessments in these courses along with audio. These can also be done in short turnaround time with limited resources at hand.
Thus a boring page turner course becomes interesting with interactivities, audio and also a navigation panel which helps in easier course navigation. Flash playback enables it to play in the standard browser with engaging content. However these cannot challenge the high quality of some professionally designed asynchronous courses. But it can solve the problems arising out of immediate training needs. The production costs also come down well.
Technologies will keep on changing or updating themselves. It is upon us how we align ourselves with it. A course irrespective of whether it has been created in Powerpoint or not, can fail in its objective. On one hand, it is actually enticing to use Powerpoint as an elearning tool keeping in mind the low cost of production and rapid delivery, while on the other hand it brings to mind static content pages which are boring and kill attention.
But one thing is definite that it depends on the instructional designer to layer and chunk the content well. Powerpoint slides can also have high educational value depending on the instructional strategy that has been adopted. It is actually an elearning challenge to research and find out the best practices and tips that can lead to the effective use of Powerpoint to create a course. So you are left with the option of creating a course in Powerpoint which is either boring or innovative.