It started with a simple question
I asked my students a simple question the other day. “What are y’all up to this weekend?” Nothing groundbreaking. It’s one of those small moments that gives you a read on where they are mentally. Work, gaming, catching up on assignments, the usual rhythm.
And then one of them said, completely casually, “We’re doing a PowerPoint party.” I laughed. They didn’t.
So now I’m curious. That’s not a throwaway comment. That’s specific. That’s a thing. Within about fifteen minutes I’m down a rabbit hole of Google, Reddit threads, and eventually watching people present full slide decks to their friends arguing absurd, oddly passionate takes like they’re defending a thesis. And here’s the part that stuck.
They’re putting real effort into it. Timing, visuals, delivery, structure. They’re thinking about how it lands. They’re reading the room. They’re adjusting in real time. Not for a grade. Not for credit. Not because they have to. Just… because it’s fun.
Same tool. Completely different experience. That’s when this stopped being a funny trend and started feeling like something worth paying attention to.
The part we can’t ignore
If students are willing to do that kind of work voluntarily, then the issue has never been PowerPoint. It’s the experience we design around it.
Watch enough of these and a pattern shows up. They’re short. Nobody’s sitting through a 25-minute deck. They revolve around one idea, usually something the presenter actually cares about, even if it’s a little ridiculous. There’s an expectation that the audience will react, laugh, push back. And the presenter sounds like themselves. That last one matters more than we tend to admit.
Because most academic presentations slowly train that out of students. Not on purpose, but effectively. The safest version becomes the default. Introduce the topic. Summarize the material. Add a few visuals. Stay close to the rubric. Move on.
It works. It demonstrates understanding. It just doesn’t feel like anything.
Where the energy drops
Students are good at reading expectations. They figure out what an assignment is really asking for and adjust accordingly. Not laziness. Strategy. So when presentations feel flat, it’s worth asking whether we designed them that way.
Most of what we assign is thoughtful and aligned with outcomes. That’s not the issue. The issue is that somewhere in that alignment, the energy gets sanded down. We didn’t design presentations to fail – but we did design them to be forgettable.
And once that becomes the pattern, students stop trying to engage and just aim to get it done. That’s a very different goal.
What students are already doing right
The wild part is that the skills don’t disappear outside the classroom. They show up immediately when the context changes. Underneath the humor and chaos of these presentations, students are still doing exactly what we want. They’re building arguments. They’re organizing ideas. They’re using visuals with intent. They’re reading an audience and adjusting in real time.
It’s like watching someone grind side quests and accidentally max out their main skill tree. We talk about engagement like it’s something we have to create from scratch. But students are already engaging deeply in structured communication tasks.
Just not always in our assignments.
A small shift with big impact
So instead of asking how to make presentations more engaging, I’ve been sitting with a different question. What changes if we stop asking students to present information and start asking them to do something with it?
Not a full redesign. Just a shift in framing.
In English, that might look like asking students to argue for an interpretation instead of summarizing one.
- Convince the class your interpretation is correct.
- Make a case for why the “villain” is actually right.
In history, it becomes about perspective and causality.
- Argue that a well-known figure is overrated.
- Defend a small event as more important than it seems.
Courses grounded in theory get stronger when they connect to lived experience.
- Explain a concept using something from your own life.
- Apply a theory to a fictional character and defend it.
And in workforce programs, this shift lines up naturally with real expectations.
- Explain a process like someone’s safety depends on it.
- Make a case for a decision under pressure.
- Walk through what goes wrong if something is misunderstood.
Across all of it, the pattern holds. We move from explaining information to making it matter.
Designing for something with payoff
Once you see it, it’s hard to unsee. Shorter presentations force clarity. One idea is harder to hide behind than ten. Expecting a reaction from an audience changes how something is built. Leaving room for personality doesn’t lower standards, it removes a constraint.
Students don’t disengage because they lack ability. They disengage when there’s no reason to invest beyond completion. But when the assignment invites them to make something land, effort shows up differently. Not because we required it, but because it’s worth doing well.
Bringing it back to my own classroom
I teach video production, where pacing and audience connection are the whole game. And even there, it’s easy to drift into projects that are technically solid and emotionally flat. So now I’m asking different questions when I design assignments.
- What happens if this is shorter?
- What happens if the goal is to persuade instead of report?
- What happens if the student’s voice is part of the expectation?
None of those changes are dramatic on their own. But together, they shift the center of gravity. From completing the assignment to making it stick.
I don’t think students are disengaged in the way we sometimes frame it – I think they’re selective.
They invest where the experience feels worth the energy – and they’re very good at spotting when it isn’t. And every now and then, they show us exactly what that looks like, usually in a place we weren’t expecting to find it. A PowerPoint party probably wasn’t on anyone’s list of instructional design inspiration.
But here we are.
