Best Practices for Designing
Presentations for Students presented by: Nicole Ellison
Instructional Designer

Agenda
– PPT vs. Other tools
– Pros/cons of PPT
– 12 best practices for design you can’t live without!

Death by PowerPoint
“Death by PowerPoint” by Don McMillian http://tinyurl.com/a89xwcw

PPT vs. Other tools
PowerPoint
• We know it well
• We have it
• Easy to use
• We love to hate it
Other Presentation tools
• Prezi
• SlideCaptain
• Haiku Deck
• Flowboard

Your typical content presentation is… intended to
• Enhance interest, clarity and retention
• Illustrate concepts
• Reinforce content
But students can struggle…
• Deriving meaning from bullet points can be challenging
• Students might not take notes

• To keep your learners focused and attentive
• To engage your learners with the content
• And we want our learners to retain
the content so they may utilize it later in their profession.
Make your message stick!
Infographic

And now our feature….
12 DESIGN BEST PRACTICES
YOU CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT!

Best Practices
1.
Choosing a theme
• Keep it simple
• Choose something on a white or light background
• Avoid flashy designs or busy colors

Best Practices
2.
F o n t s
• Limit font variety
• Make sure it is large enough to read
• Use sans serif fonts (like this one)
• DO NOT TYPE IN ALL CAPS.

Best Practices
3.
• Use sparingly
• Make sure your text is legible.
• Don’t use color for emphasis (use bold instead).
• Don’t use a colored or distracting/clashing background

Best Practices
4.
• Keep text on one slide to a minimum
• Explain visuals/graphics
• Use the notes area of a PPT to explain your bullets.
• Consider alternatives to bullets
• Utilize space on slide well

Best Practices
5.
• Illustrate concepts through visuals such as:
– Images, Maps, tables, diagrams, flow charts, or graphs
• Only use visuals that support your content
• Obey copyright laws, cite your source.

• Father Guido’s 5 minute University
• http://youtu.be/c00GPvns31U

Best Practices
6.
L e n g t h
• Keep it as short as you possibly can
• Chunk your content
• Think about attention span- Are you still awake?

Best Practices
7. Interaction
• Break up content with questions for live audience or reflection (online students)
• Include a quiz question before your next slide.
• Include a brief quiz at the end of the presentation

Best Practices
8.
Notes and Notetaking
• Make your PPT available for printing.
• Include notes (generate PDF with notes)

Best Practices
9.
• Mistakes happen especially when you are in a hurry…But don’t forget to:
• Do a spell check
• Check your facts
• Have another person/colleague look at it before you go live.

Best Practices
10. Animations/transitions
• Just don’t do it.
• It detracts from content
• It can get very busy, very quickly

Best Practices
11. Narration
• Consider adding narration to your presentation
• Increases interest, retention, and understanding (if done properly)
• Adobe Presenter is an add-in for PPT

Best Practices and 12.
• If possible include the link of where the video can be found
• Keep copyright and fair use in mind. Cite your sources.
Provide transcripts or closed captioning whenever possible

Let’s Recap
1. Theme
2. Fonts
3. Color
4. Text/Content
5. Images/Graphics
6. Length
7. Interaction
8. Notes
9. Errors
10. Animation
11. Narration
12. Use of Video

• Give them something to ponder (a real head scratcher)
•
• Key takeaways
• Something motivating or positive
All of the above

Questions/Comments?
• For more resources check out…
– Free PPT Templates
– Idea Paper #46 Effective Lecturing
– 6 Alternatives to Bullet lists
– 7 Resources for better PowerPoints

nellison@regis.edu