Giving professors gadgets without training can do more harm than good in the classroom, students say.

Alison Lesht, a senior at Connecticut College, dreaded going to her organic-chemistry classes, held in one of the college's wired classrooms.

It wasn't that the material was dense and challenging. It was because her professor "would write on the PowerPoint slides complete sentences, which she would then read," explains Ms. Lesht, who is majoring in biology and minoring in religious studies. "It didn't really add anything to the lecture. It just made everything more complicated and convoluted."

"I call it 'PowerPoint abuse,'" she says. "It's pretty widespread."

Colleges have spent millions on "smart classrooms" packed with the latest gadgets to assist teaching -- computerized projection systems, Internet ports at every seat, even video cameras with motion detectors that can track the movements of a lecturer. But colleges have spent far less time and money giving professors the skills to use even the simplest technology effectively.

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By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

Article source: The Chronicle of Higher Education