Pecha Kuchas in the Higher Education Classroom

This best practices presentation reports on the use of pecha kucha presentations integrated into the higher educational setting. Pecha kuchas are also known as 20x20 presentations since they consist of 20 images each 20 seconds long. The sample in this study were doctoral students in education, ranging in age from 30 to 60. When attempting to create multimedia one of the key problems that doctoral students in education face is relying too much on old habits. As a result, the multimedia products are often too slow in terms of pace and there is an over-reliance on text such as bullet lists. This presentation will share how, and how well, doctoral students met the challenge of creating pecha kucha presentations. Pecha kuchas incorporate some of the most important lessons from cognitive psychology research regarding learning: working memory capacity limits, dual coding, cognitive processing, meaningful learning, and student motivation.