Teaching materials should enhance the spoken word

Editor—In the ABC of learning and teaching in medicine Farrow did not point out the greatest and most common pitfall of the use of teaching materials.¹

All too frequently lecturers, using sophisticated aids, display quantities of written information on a screen which they then proceed to read with their backs to their listeners. Aids should enhance the spoken word, not replace it. Good lecturers are usually exhibitionists, and training at a drama school may be of greater relevance than learning how to use PowerPoint.