presentation - Good slide design for teaching?

When I am preparing slides for a course (as I have been today, weekend be damned), aside from questions of pacing and exposition, I often find myself asking various questions about the layout of slides such as:

• Should bullets generally be introduced one-by-one using animations or should the entire slide be displayed immediately?



• Is animation generally good or bad for lecture slides?


• What is a good approach to take for titling slides?


• Should I include "separation slides" to chunk content?


• What is the optimal amount of information per slide?


• Slides should be numbered, but is it better to give the total number of slides on each (e.g., 4/20) or just the current slide (e.g., 4)?

These are all small questions but I think they add up to something non-trivial in the overall didactic potential of the slides.

I have my own opinions on these questions and I feel that I have a good intuitive sense of how to structure slides, but my hunches are just hunches.

Hence this question is looking for either:

1. Pointers to scientific studies or other well-argued material on good slide design for teaching


2. First-hand answers to the above questions (and related ones) accompanied by solid argumentation/anecdotal experience (rather than just subjective preferences)

I'm looking for answers that specifically target teaching rather than research presentations. (For me, there is a significant difference.) I'm also looking for answers that target slide layout and design rather than talk structure.

And though I appreciate that the notion of good slide design varies between different subjects, I still think that there is a meaty intersection of good practices that one could follow across all disciplines. It is precisely this intersection that the question targets.

My students thank you in advance!

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On a side note, here's a nice slightly-related question on what to do with the last slide.

Answer

This morning I watched a video about how powerpoint is killing our ability to teach properly. It can be seen as a lesson in bad slide design. One key message is if you are reading your slides to the students, you are not teaching. Ultimately, slides should just contain key information, and you should tell the rest of the story.

Regarding some of the other points: animation of text should be left to Walt Disney; there should be one idea per slide (slides are free!); separation slides are a good idea to let the listener know when topics have finished, which is especially helpful if the separation slides are blank (or even black!).

Less is more. If you want to give the students more, prepare a handout.