Abstract:

Introduction:
The improvement of academic performance is an aspect of interest in the educational and scientific community. It is generally accepted that instructional methods that improve students' access to course information will also increase their performance. In this line, the use and accessibility of PowerPoint slides in lectures are widely integrated into the university teaching process. However, there is no consensus on the impact of providing slides before lectures on academic performance. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the effect of providing or not providing slides before lectures on academic performance.

Material and Methods:
Ninety-nine students enrolled in the Exercise Training Methods course, integrated on Physical Education and Sport Science grade at University of Alcalá. All students had an attendance of over 80%. The course was located in the first semester of the academic year and was organized as follows: the first six weeks of the semester, students had access to the slides before the lectures, and the second six weeks, students did not have access to the slides. Students’ academic performance was assessed with a final exam composed of 20 questions of multiple-choice responses, of which 10 questions referred to the content taught without instructor-providing slides before lectures, and the other 10 raised questions about the content taught with access to slides. All responses were recorded and subsequently classified into correct, incorrect, and unanswered in the two conditions previously described. Statistical analysis was carried out using SPSS software (version 22; SPSS, Chicago, USA). A descriptive analysis of the variables was made and the Kolgomorov-Smirnov test was used to check data normality. The statistical significance was set at 0.05.

Results:
The sample did not meet the assumption of normality; consequently, the Wilcoxon test was conducted to find differences between the slide and non-slide conditions. The results indicated that having access to slides reduced academic performance compared to not having access to instructor-slides before lectures by reducing the number of correct responses (4.0 ± 1.8 vs 6.3 ± 1.9; P < 0.001), and increasing the incorrect responses (4.31 ± 1.91 vs 2.71± 1.62; P < 0.000). Moreover, more unanswered questions were found when the slides were available before lectures (1.3 ± 1.4 vs 1.0 ±1.5; P ≤ 0.05).

Conclusions:
Providing slides before lectures had a negative impact on the academic performance in the Exercise Training Methods course of the Physical Education and Sport Science grade.

Keywords:

Power point, instructor-provided slides, student performance.