Slideware: Text or visuals?

This Work in Progress discusses the literature evaluating the use of slideware in the classroom, student benefits and retention rates. The focus is on how the literature addresses the following issues: 1. Presentation gurus argue that slides high on visual content and low on text appeal to audiences. Research argues that students learn better from text and pictures than text alone. However, is visual content sufficient for long-term retention if the accompanying narration is not recorded, i.e. via note-taking, during class? 2. Research indicates that multimedia use occasionally leads to redundancy due to the coexistence of graphics, text and narration. Accordingly, material needs to be evaluated in terms of the combination of graphics, text and narration in order to lower the cognitive load for the students. 3. Graphics are advocated as tools to increase appeal. For educators whose goals are learning and content retention, can and should content be presented visually rather than textually? This paper discusses how the literature evaluates the suitability of both mediums to transmit information to an audience in an academic setting.