Med.Sci.Educ.
(2016) 26:397–401
DOI 10.1007/s40670-016-0251-x
COMMENTARY
On PowerPoints and Prezis: a Case for Considering Prezi
as an Alternate in Medical Education
Shaadi F Elswaifi 1
Published online: 4 May 2016
# International Association of Medical Science Educators 2016
Commentary
The ubiquitous PowerPoint appears to be the most widely used
presentation software tool in education in general and also plays a
significant and unique role in medical education. Its name has
been synonymous with Bpresentation^ for decades, and the soft-
ware is considered the default tool for preparing lecture material
[1, 2]. However, Prezi, a relatively recent newcomer to the pre-
sentation software tools [3], has been a contender in that field.
Prezi is known by a few presenters, is tried by fewer, and is used
regularly by even fewer. When you ask the average Prezi critic of
their impression of a typical Prezi presentation, they will animat-
edly cross their eyes and shake their heads around to show how
Prezis can be effective vertigo inducers! (I will explain the reason
later in the article). Prezi continues to be received with a mixture
of passionate and dispassionate reviews by educators, although
Prezi presentations contain many characteristics that make them
an ideal software tool for lecture presentations in the medical
education setting.
Let us first examine the differences between PowerPoint and
Prezi presentations. A comparison of each of the software tools is
depicted in Figs. 1 and 2. In design mode, a PowerPoint typically
shows each slide on a right pane and the sequence of slides to be
presented on a left pane (Fig. 1a). You can design each slide and
its content separately on the right pane. You can also choose the
order of slides to be presented from the list on the left pane. You
can add text, images, or graphic objects to each slide. You can also
* Shaadi F Elswaifi
selswaif@vt.edu
1
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Edward Via College
of Osteopathic Medicine, Blacksburg, VA, USA
control the color and appearance of each element on each slide
and add animation and motion. In presentation mode, PowerPoint
displays slides one at a time (Fig. 2a). You can move forward or
backward from each slide to show the slide that follows or pre-
cedes that slide, respectively. Transition effects can also be used
between slides [4]. In design mode, a Prezi shows a working area
on the right and the sequence of Bviews^ that will appear on the
screen during the presentation on a tab on the left (Fig. 1b). The
working area represents one Bbaseboard^ where you place all the
elements of the presentation. Elements on the baseboard may be
text, pictures, or graphic objects. You may group, size, or rotate
any of these elements and add some minimal animation effects to
each of them. More importantly, you can change the size of any
element or group of elements relative to others, potentially making
infinitely smaller groups of items within, or next to, each other.
You then determine the sequence of views what will appear dur-
ing a presentation by clicking on the elements you would like to
show or drawing frames around groups of elements to form a
Bpathway^ of the views you want to show. In presentation mode,
Prezi moves through and across this baseboard, zooms in or out
onto those elements according to the sequence you selected, and
displays those elements to occupy the screen (Fig. 2b). You may
also interrupt a presentation sequence and zoom onto any element
by clicking on that element. You may then zoom back to continue
the presentation sequence. Sample presentations can be seen on
the company’s website (prezi.com). Prezi presentations are there-
fore more similar to a movie than to a slide presentation. When
designing an effective Prezi presentation, one should think about
designing a movie and not about the classical slideshows that used
to dominate education when the carousel slide projector was a
common fixture in classrooms.
While PowerPoint appears to provide more freedom in the
larger number of functions and possibilities for designing visual
effects, the use of these functions in a lecture setting often detracts
from the utility of this tool as a lecture presentation tool. These
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Fig. 1 A comparison of PowerPoint and Prezi in design mode. a
PowerPoint has each slide on the right and the sequence of slides to be
presented on the left. The sequence of slides to appear during a
presentation is selected by reordering the slides on the left. b Prezi
shows a working Bbaseboard^ on the right and the sequence of views
functions should only be used in a manner that emphasizes the
message of each slide or each visual component. They need to
remain relevant to the content and message. Adding too many
colors, fonts, object animations, or slide transition effects that are
not relevant to the content or to the point being made can easily
distract and allow the viewer to lose focus of the learning objec-
tives that should be emphasized. Furthermore, because of the
sequential linearity of PowerPoint slides, the larger context of
how each topic within the presentation relates to the big picture
is easy to miss. Additional effort must be put into designing the
Med.Sci.Educ. (2016) 26:397–401
(not slides) that will appear during a presentation on the left. Each view is
determined by marking an area or an object that the user would like to
show. A number representing the sequence of the area or object to be
viewed is marked next to that area or object (arrows). The sequence of
views can be changed by reordering the views on the left
PowerPoint presentation so as to minimize this problem. To fur-
ther complicate matters, most PowerPoint presentations in medi-
cal education are also used as vehicles for content storage and not
only content presentation. Lecturers tend to add much of the in-
formation they want the students to know on the slides or in the
notes section, and PowerPoint files become the only text provided
to students to learn the topic. With the large amount of information
presented to students in each lecture, medical students have been
accustomed to using the PowerPoint presentation files as their
only source for studying the material, with minimal use of other
Med.Sci.Educ. (2016) 26:397–401
Fig. 2 A comparison of PowerPoint and Prezi in presentation mode. a
PowerPoint presents slides sequentially. Each slide occupies the screen at
a single time. b Prezi presents the area or object that was marked for
resources such as textbooks or journal articles. The use of
PowerPoint in this manner has discouraged students from using
textbooks or equivalent information resources. This manner of use
has also made PowerPoint a multi-purpose tool that plays more
than one role, but plays none of those roles effectively. When
using its functions, the larger context of how the elements of a
PowerPoint are used should be, but often is not, taken into
399
viewing, one at a time. The application pans in all directions, zooms in
and out, or rotates while moving between views
consideration. Combined, these factors may be contributing to
the reason that students have been found to retain less information
when PowerPoint was used compared to when a lecture was
delivered without the software [5].
Using a PowerPoint to perform more than one function is
similar to using a minivan for all functions that vehicles can do.
You can use a minivan to take a long family vacation trip, take the
400
kids to soccer practice, carry a few bags of groceries, haul furni-
ture from the store, carry some supplies from the hardware store,
and probably also race around the track on weekends! The point
of this analogy is that PowerPoint is ideal for a few functions, but
could also perform many other functions, albeit not in an ideal
manner. The moral of the story is that we should consider the
ability of any tool we use to effectively perform the functions
we want that tool to perform, but we should also consider the
limitations of that tool and the overall goal that needs to be
achieved.
The same applies to Prezi. While the set of functions in Prezi
are more limited and are applied in a different manner compared
to PowerPoint, they must nonetheless be used in the appropriate
context. One needs to plan and consider the entire message being
delivered in the Prezi before starting. This process is closer to
directing a movie than to slapping information on individual dig-
ital slabs, as one would do with PowerPoint slides. While we
could easily get away without that overall package design when
putting together a PowerPoint presentation, this is not as easy to
get away with in Prezi. More effort is needed to get the most out
of, and avoid the downsides of, Prezi compared to PowerPoint.
However, any effort placed in designing a Prezi pays off once the
presentation is complete. The final product of that effort is often
worthwhile. A few ideas may be used to make the most out of
what Prezi presentations can offer. For example, one of the ben-
efits of Prezi presentations is their ability to illustrate the larger
context in which each part of the lecture topic exists. This would
be achieved by dividing the content into distinct groups or cate-
gories that can be visually illustrated separately without losing
sight of the big picture. The students will have a larger context
in which to place the information that follows. Prezi presentations
can also be designed to demonstrate the relationship between
different portions of the topic. To use an example from a micro-
biology lecture, placing all the information on staphylococci,
which are Gram-positive cocci arranged in clusters, next to all
the information on streptococci, which are Gram-positive cocci
arranged in chains, helps the students see the relationship between
these two groups of organisms. Arranging the information for
each group of bacteria on a background that appears, when
zoomed out, as cocci in clusters or cocci in chains, for staphylo-
cocci or streptococci, respectively, helps give the students the
visual clues to remember information under each group. By
zooming in and out to talk about each group of bacteria, the
students continue to remember the context of all the information
they learn under each group and continue to associate that infor-
mation with the respective group. The students would continue to
know Bwhere^ they are in their progress to learning this topic and
form a mental map that helps them assimilate this information [6].
A sample Prezi that covers this topic can be viewed at http://prezi.
com/zi4g6zomuj8z/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy.
Prezis could also be designed to depict processes that contain
sequences such life cycles and biochemical pathways. Many
topics could be broken down into steps that can then be
Med.Sci.Educ. (2016) 26:397–401
depicted on diagrams to help the learner organize the
information. For example, disease pathogenesis may be broken
into steps and those steps depicted on a diagram of a human body.
A Prezi demonstrating this example can be viewed at http://prezi.
com/brgefriilt9d/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy.
The zooming capability of Prezi can be specifically utilized to
help the learner appreciate scope and scale relations, for
example, moving between organs to discuss physiology, then
zooming into a particular tissue or cell to discuss events at the
molecular level. Another benefit of using a Prezi presentation is
that the relative importance of topics can be visually emphasized.
Content that is relatively less important can be displayed in
smaller size compared to others. Content that is more important
can be displayed larger than the others. Prezi presentations, thus,
provide a visual continuity between all topics of a lecture. This
continuity helps keep the students more engaged in the topic and
more able to place each piece of information in its place within the
larger framework structure of the topic. When compared to the
monotonous linearity of PowerPoint presentations, one can
appreciate the benefits that a Prezi presentation may provide [7].
As with the design of PowerPoint presentations, Prezi presen-
tations should also be designed to be clear and simple. Fewer text
should be in each view to minimize clutter. Size of the objects and
the display sequence should be designed to minimize zooming in
and out unless it is necessary. Also, rotating the angle of objects
should only be used where there is a purpose to that rotation.
Overusing rotation, combined with extreme zooming in Prezi, is
credited for causing the dizzying effect I alluded to in the begin-
ning of the article. Therefore, less is often more when it comes to
what is on a Prezi presentation or PowerPoint presentation. Less
clutter translates to more comprehension of the content.
Everything used should be relevant to the content.
In medical education, students are accustomed to receiving
PowerPoint presentation files before each lecture in order to fol-
low the lecture presentation and take notes. Also, the PowerPoint
files are often used as the students’ sole study material for that
content. Prezi presentation file formats do not allow for the pre-
sentation to be shared with students in a practical manner. Also,
Prezi presentations do not directly lend themselves to printing in
an effective way. Thus, the students may not be able to have a
copy of the Prezi presentation to use during lecture. There are two
solutions when attempting to use Prezi presentations instead of
PowerPoint presentations. The first would be to insert prepared
PowerPoint slides of the topic as elements in the Prezi presenta-
tion. This can be done by making simple PowerPoint slides,
importing those slides into Prezi as images, then arranging those
images to make the content of the Prezi presentation. The
PowerPoint file can then be sent to students so they may have
the content in the format to which they are familiar while the Prezi
is used to present the topic. More importantly in this scenario, the
students could use the PowerPoint to follow the topic as the in-
structor presents the lecture using Prezi, which addresses a com-
mon student complaint when Prezi is the only lecture material
Med.Sci.Educ. (2016) 26:397–401
provided to them. In this example, the PowerPoint file may also
be used as the content storage tool. Furthermore, the overall image
of the Prezi presentation can be captured as a PDF file and sent to
the students so they can have a copy of the layout of the Prezi
presentation. The second solution is to design a version of the
Prezi presentation so that the displayed sequence can be printed
and represented as Bslide^ snapshots, similar to PowerPoint slides.
This sequence may be exported from Prezi as a PDF file, and the
student can then use that as an outline to follow and take notes as
the Prezi is being presented. An additional study guide may be
provided to the students so that they can receive another, more
comprehensive, resource for the content that complements the
presentation.
Using Prezi does not eliminate the possibility that the presen-
tation be used to add all the text that the presenter would like the
students to have for studying. However, Prezi provides two ad-
vantages in addressing this issues; first, the presentation files
cannot be easily shared with students. Second, the nature of
designing a Prezi requires that the presenter consider the learner’s
perspective when preparing the layout in which to present that
material. Those two factors force the presenter/educator to sepa-
rate the function of presenting from the function of content stor-
age. In other words, there is no easy way to allow Prezi to be used
as a content storage vehicle. This allows the presenter to focus on
those functions separately and find the best tools to achieve each
one. This also allows the educator to adopt more learner-centered
approaches in both preparing the material needed for the students
to learn the topic and the best manner by which to present that
material. Considering the variety of educational technologies and
the different styles for using those technologies, more studies are
needed to determine the effect educational tools and style of
presentation have on student mental learning models.
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In summary, an ideal way to think about Prezi and
PowerPoint is to separate the notion of presentation from the
notion of content delivery. There are more implications to ap-
plying these notions to our daily medical educational practices
and more to consider in the broader topic of the use of infor-
mation technology and software tools in the educational set-
ting. These are additional topics that need further examination.
To conclude, putting together a mediocre PowerPoint that gets
the job done is a relatively easy task. Putting together a Prezi
presentation takes more effort, but the effort placed in planning
and designing the layout of that Prezi presentation is not lost,
especially in the medical education setting. I would encourage
all educators to give Prezi a chance and consider the pros and
cons of any educational tool they utilize for educating their
students.
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