PowerPoint Content

Courses are composed of a variety of content types, but one of the most common is a presentation delivered by an instructor, supplemented with a PowerPoint presentation. For years there has been debate about whether PowerPoint presentations are an effective method of delivering course content. Schuman's position is that they "are the scourge of higher education." Some go so far as to claim that we are wasting $250 million a day due to bad PowerPoint presentations. Noer shares what he considers awesome presentations, and there are many other resources online for best practices in presenting online.  The bottom line is that, just like any tool, PowerPoint can be used effectively or not.

Listen to a common faculty request that I hear:

It is not effective is to take a tool that is best suited for use in one medium and transport it, intact, into a different medium and expect it to retain its effectiveness. It's like using the heel of a shoe to pound a nail for want of a hammer; it might work, but it won't be easy; it certainly isn't efficient; and it might really damage your shoe. An effective live presentation uses tools such as PowerPoint to enhance, explain, and guide face-to-face presentations. When a presentation is moved to an online environment without the simultaneously delivered information, the impact is, at best, lost and, at worse, made worthless. So what are you supposed to do?

Narrated PowerPoint Presentations

Your first step is to prepare your content for online use. Read this article by Emily Moore, for some great best practices.

I present occasionally on creating effective presentations and posters. For purposes of this example, I have abbreviated the presentation, but if you want to check out the PowerPoint, you can do so here (one note, some browsers will give you a warning if you choose to simply open the presentation; it's probably easier if you choose to save it to your desktop then open it there to view). Keep in mind that this presentation was used to supplement a face-to-face presentation. Without the context of a speaker, however, it is fairly useless if published in an online course.

For a presentation to be effective in an online environment, the entire experience must be shared; this includes the speaker's contribution (the narration) as well as the visual piece (the presentation). While you could choose to type the supplemental information, it's difficult to watch a presentation while reading text and not miss something. In fact, when I am the user in that situation, I usually have to go through the presentation twice, first reading, then watching the presentation. A more effective solution, therefore, is to provide the speaker's contribution in audio format so that it more closely mimics what would occur in person. Previously it was relatively simply to record an audio "voice-over" in PowerPoint and export the document as a PDF file. With the increased maliciousness on the Web and other inherent problems, Web browsers have now stopped automatically playing files with embedded Flash content—which voice-over PowerPoints in PDF have. You are strongly advised to not save PowerPoint files with audio as PDFs, but rather choose File, Export and create a video. This will result in a file with the extension of MP4, which can easily be played in any Web browser.  

Review this video version that contains the accompanying "voice"—what do you think?

Activity

If you will be recording narrations, develop a script. I suggest you create it in a word processing application. Use double or triple space and at least 12 point font. You will be recording as you read this script and you want to make it easily viewable. Open your PowerPoint and in your script file use headings for Slide 1, Slide 2, etc. This will allow you to move through your presentation as you record your script and keep on track. Know what's in your script and try not to ad lib. Not only will this help you keep "on track" during your recording, your printed script can provide a transcript to accompany your video to increase the accessibility of your video.

Now would also be a good time to review your presentation and make sure that it follows good design standards as far as color choices, sufficient but not over-much text, and easily viewable graphics. View the complete presentation for tips.

On the next page, we'll talk about web content.