Criteria for quality PowerPoint slides:design, lay out and format.

1. Introduction

Before planning your PowerPoint enhanced learning session and designing the PowerPoint slides you want to use in the session, you will have to think about

• what should 'good' PowerPoint slides to be used in facilitation look like? and
• when is it appropriate to use the "PowerPoint-slide"?
  
• how should quality PowerPoint slides be used in facilitation?

You can now create slides using all the technical features, but this doesn’t mean you should use all of them on the slides you will create to facilitate learning.

When using PP-slides in facilitation they need obviously to be very well designed, be of high quality, (meet technical criteria). The slides also need to have an educational value, adding value to the learning experiences of the learners (meet pedagogical criteria).

It is important to note that even if you have a set of PowerPoint slides that are educationally relevant and of high design quality, if they are not used appropriately in a session they still might not be effective.

2. Technical criteria for quality PowerPoint slides

How should my PowerPoint slides look like?

Your slides are to support learning, the first thing is to ensure that the slides you intend to use are communicating and not blocking communication. Your slides are to be of high quality. Copying a long text on a slide – is a no go! Numerous web pages give tips and hints.

Keep in mind:

• most of the information you find on the web is about presentations, some person presenting to an audience, and NOT about using PowerPoint slides in a learning session to enhance learning. So be careful about what information you find – what might be good practice when you present during a conference might be bad practice when facilitating learning using PP-slides as a learning resource.

• there are different views on what makes a quality slide you can use in facilitation of learning. E.g. use of bullets is condemned by some authors, others recommend use – but limited number per slide and appearing one by one (using animation); some say minimum font size 24 points, other set the minimum at 28 points.

Read the following resources and open a word document and make notes highlighting what you think are the most important design tips. (You will share this document later in the week):

• Criteria for quality PowerPoint slides
• Design Tips for PowerPoint slides
• How to make effective presentations (ppt) by Satyateet Singh
• Technical criteria for PowerPoint slides (checklist)
• PowerPoint Presentation Guidelines