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Center for Teaching

Presenting

Many presentations can be enhanced by the addition of interesting and helpful visuals. Most presentation tools can be accompanied by recorded narration. They can usually incorporate audio and video clips, as well as animation of slide content.

While the most common way to add visuals to your presentation is by using PowerPoint, more and more presentation applications are being developed, allowing for different ways to present your content and add interactivity. You can learn about many of these product on the 36 Presentation Software & PowerPoint Alternatives for 2017 blog post.

  • Present chunks of information as in a traditional lecture
  • Organize course content in a systematic and sequential format for students to view outside of class.
  • Create and post their own productions about an aspect of the course or about a research topic.
  • Build a simple digital portfolio.
  • Print large-scale posters for presentations.
  • Make tutorials with logic branching.

This spreadsheet developed by Seton Hall University contains rubrics for a wide variety of assignments provides a good starting point from which you can create your own grading rubric for presentation assignments.

Potential Uses

  • Present chunks of information as in a traditional lecture
  • Organize course content in a systematic and sequential format for students to view outside of class.
  • Create and post their own productions about an aspect of the course or about a research topic.
  • Build a simple digital portfolio.
  • Print large-scale posters for presentations.
  • Make tutorials with logic branching.

Pros

It can make a presentation more interesting. Even interesting presentations can grow long and boring. With an animated presentation or interesting quotes or other fun slides, you can bring people back from their boredom. It is easy to customize each slide to meet specific needs. Images on a slide can be decreased or increased in scale to fit your needs. It only takes a few clicks to insert, alter, and align images to create a needed visual representation. You can even use arrows, pointers, or other shapes to highlight key areas of information you want people to know about. Most are free or low-cost. PowerPoint and Keynote come with the product suites of Window and Mac computers. Online applications are often free, like Prezi or slides.com.

Cons

There’s always the chance of running into technical difficulties. Even tech-savvy individuals can run into presentation issues when the technology doesn’t work as intended. Maybe the computer stops working. Or you lose power to your outlet. Or the projector doesn’t work right. This can alter the positive first impression of a presentation very quickly. Slides with too much information on them can become overwhelming. Because there are so many options that can be included on a PowerPoint presentation, it can be easy to go overboard on the number of colors, sounds, shapes, and other items that can be used. By adding to many things, you can detract from the information that needs to be shared. It isn’t a substitute for what a presenter must do. Many who use PowerPoint tend to rely on the information on the slide instead of providing a learning narrative. It is easy to become too reliant on this software and forget that there is an actual presentation that needs to be completed. It needs modification to introduce the social presence so important to online learning. The slide-based presentation can seem impersonal; incorporating brief video clips that show the instructor as well as narration can help minimize this problem. Presentations with media can have large file sizes. When voiceover is used, or especially if the PowerPoint also contains video clips. Keep this in mind if you intend to send your presentation via email or post to online where there may be file size upload limits. Adapted from “10 Pros and Cons of PowerPoint Presentations“

Tools

PowerPoint

PowerPoint is a slideshow presentation program that’s part of the Microsoft office suite of tools. Though you mostly likely have seen PowerPoint, you may not have created your own. PowerPoint readily lends itself to linear presentation of concepts and examples. Keep the chunks short to keep students’ attention. PowerPoint is compatible with all other software in the Microsoft Office suite; you can export slides into Word documents or use Excel charts within your presentation. In addition to image and audio support, you can embed videos within a presentation for easy playback without exiting the program. You can also export presentation files for distribution or viewing online. Learn more about how to use PowerPoint to its fullest. 6 steps for creating an Effective PowerPoint Presentation Learn how to record narration in PowerPoint 2016

Prezi

Prezi now has two products, Prezi Classic and Prezi Next. With either product, content can be presented in a non-linear fashion. You, as a presenter, can jump around easily across all the content within your presentation. If the Prezi is embedded online, students can easily dip into any of the content simply by clicking on that are of the screen. Prezi is useful for showing relationship. If you have a concept that has many dimensions or a system comprised of many parts, Prezi allows you to zoom in or out, allowing you to not only show an overview of an entire presentation but also to move in on specific areas to learn more. Get started using Prezi Classic Get started using Prezi Next

Keynote (Mac)

Keynote is Apple’s equivalent to Microsoft’s PowerPoint. The feature set and application logic for both are very similar. They both operate on a slide show model. Just as Microsoft PowerPoint integrates with the other Microsoft Office products, so, too, does Keynote integrate with the other applications within iWork. Get started with Keynote