Presentation Slides and Online Learning

Presentation slides can be a valuable resource instructors can share with students for use in the online learning experience. A slide deck can be used as a tool to summarize and highlight important topics in an online course. Instructors should evaluate providing presentation slides for their students, but more importantly, they should take care in the preparation of slides that will be used in the online environment. Slide preparation is as much an art as a science. The creation of slide decks for online learning follows common design principles used in the preparation of presentation slides in general. There are also specific considerations to ponder upon when preparing presentations for use in the virtual classroom.

General Design Guidelines for Presentation slides

Five common design guidelines for the creation of presentation slides include:

·     Consider the User. Always remember who are your learners and adapt the presentation (the design and the language) to the audience (adults, young learners, etc.).

·     Remember Basic Design. Employ the design elements of balance, proximity, alignment, repetition, contrast and space.

·     Consider Typography. Limit the typefaces to two (one serif and one san serif), use font sizes, and wisely combine font styles (bold, regular, light)

·     Use Eye-catching Visuals. Use visual elements to enhance the communication of data, information and knowledge and support learning (for example, quality photographs and relevant diagrams and charts)

·     Limit the Text Copy. Employ 40 to 50 words per slide, no more than 6 words per line, and no more than 6 lines per slide.

Specific Design Guidelines for Online Presentation slides

Five specific design guidelines for the creation of online presentation slides include:

·     Chunk Content. Segment long presentations into smaller presentations that are no longer than 15 to 20 slides.

·     Universal and Small Files. Convert slides to a universal and accessibility compliant format (for example, pdf, html slides).

·     File Size Matters. Check for the files size of presentations, as high quality images, embedded videos, and voiced over slides can increase the file size of a presentation.

·     Structure the Presentation. Academic presentations should have five basic parts: a title slide, a learning objectives slide, content development slides, a summary slide, and a bibliography side.

·     Follow the Classroom Design. Institutions and organizations have design guidelines. These institutional guidelines should be considered or followed. Additionally, some virtual classrooms have a design principle (for example, a color harmony) and the presentations could implement those design principles to provide a more consistent experience.

Online Learning and Presentation Slides

Online learning has unique technical challenges for addressing the delivery of learning content for the virtual classroom. Learning materials and resources need to be adapted for delivery in the online environment. As instructors, we need to keep in mind general design presentation guidelines, but also consider the specific presentation guidelines that are required for providing slide decks for the virtual learning environment. Carefully crafting academic presentations will result in quality slide decks that will be pleasant, inviting, motivating and foster learning.