1. Training and Instructional Design
Unit 5: Building an Effective PowerPoint Presentation
Welcome to Training and Instructional Design. This will be a lecture on building an effective PowerPoint presentation. This is lecture a.
Lecture a
This material (Comp20_Unit5a) was developed by Columbia University, funded by the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology under Award Number 1U24OC This material was updated by Columbia University under Award Number 90WT0004.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit

2. Building an Effective PowerPoint Presentation Learning Objectives
Objective 1: Construct a script or storyboard for a presentation
Objective 2: Design a custom slide background for a training program
Objective 3: Demonstrate the appropriate use of color and text in a presentation
Objective 4: Embed graphics and video in a presentation
Objective 5: Use the appropriate use of ‘builds’ and ‘actions’
Objective 6: Use the PowerPoint graph and chart functions for designing instructional materials
Objective 7: Demonstrate how to deliver an effective PowerPoint presentation
The learning objectives for the building an effective PowerPoint presentation unit are: number one, constructing a script or storyboard for a presentation; number two, designing a custom slide background for a training program; number three, demonstrating the appropriate use of color and text in a presentation; number four, embedding graphics and videos in a presentation; number five, demonstrating the appropriate use of ‘builds’ and ‘actions’; number six, using the PowerPoint graph and chart functions for designing instructional materials; and seven, demonstrating how to deliver an effective PowerPoint presentation.
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3. Your educational plan Presentation goal Specific learning objectives
Your audience
Learning needs
Learning style
Presentation environment
Live presentation
Stand – alone
Units of this component taught you how to identify the goals for your presentation and then define specific learning objectives based on the needs analysis while understanding the constraints of your audience and training environment. Your next step is to use this information to create an effective training presentation. In this unit we will use Microsoft’s PowerPoint Presentation software to build a multimedia training slide deck.
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4. Collect your visuals Images Corporate branding Movies Pictures Graphs
Logos
Movies
Before you begin to design your presentation you should collect all the images, logos, graphics, videos and other graphic objects that you want to include in the presentation. These may include some screen captures of the EHR or videos showing how to use particular features of the EHR.
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5. Storyboard format
Use a text or graphic outline to create a storyboard for your presentation
A storyboard is a visual layout of the pictures and text you want on each slide
Use these templates to tell your story
3 x 5 card
Post-it NoteTM
It is helpful for new trainers to develop a graphic outline of the presentation before jumping right into the PowerPoint presentation. This text or graphic outline of the presentation will help you organize the presentation in a logical sequence and prevent you from getting distracted by the fonts, colors, animations, and other decorative features of PowerPoint. The traditional storyboard is similar to a comic strip. You can use 3 x 5 cards or Post-it Notes to represent each slide in your PowerPoint deck. The small format prevents you from writing too many words on the slide. You can sketch images or notes about pictures and moves too. This can be done individually or in small groups.
The process of visual thinking and planning allows a group of people to brainstorm together, placing their ideas on storyboards and then arranging the storyboards on a white board or conference room wall. This approach fosters more ideas and generates consensus inside the group. Once you develop a logical organization for your presentation your can start to build a more detailed outline or the actual text. Remember, if your can’t fit all the words on the 3 x 5 cards you have too many words for a PowerPoint slide and you might want a handout to convey that information. The storyboard format is a good method to plan a training video too. Use each card or box to represent a scene or specific segment of your training video.
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6. Mind mapping software electronic storyboard
Freemind
Vue
An alternative to storyboarding or outlining on paper is to use mind-mapping software to quickly generate your presentation ideas. It’s useful to use this methodology if you get stuck thinking and can’t see the logical sequence of the presentation. There are many free mind-mapping programs you can try and these graphic brainstorming software applications will produce traditional outlines too. To get you started you can try Freemind at or Vue at

7. Guidelines for your story
One message or idea per slide!
Keep it simple
Short bullets
Nouns and verbs
Small amount of text (audience will read ahead)
Simple charts, illustrations
Pictures instead of text whenever you can
If it does not fit on a slide, too complex, use handouts
Timing: 45 – 60 seconds per slide
Here are a couple simple rules to keep in mind as you create your presentation. Think of PowerPoint as a container for all of your text, graphics, movies, hyperlinks, but only include one message or idea on each slide. If you are comparing or contrasting two ideas that is still one concept and PowerPoint even has a slide format for that. Keep it simple - It’s easy to start including lots of ideas on your first slide but you don’t want to have to put it all on one slide. A PowerPoint presentation can contain as many slides as you need to tell your story. Use short bullets instead of complete sentences so the audience can quickly scan the slide and then listen to you. Try to use active and direct language – nouns and verbs. Including simple illustrations and pictures will keep your audience engaged as give your presentation, but make sure the image is relevant to the slide topic or you will distract the learner. And remember that information that is too long or complex to fit on a slide can be given out as a handout or hyperlink. As a general rule you can plan for seconds of speaking per slide. If you have 50 slides for a 20 minutes presentation you’ll overwhelm your audience.
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8. Planning your presentation design
Check for official company design or create one with company logo and colors
Use standard formats and design if possible
Effective colors
Font size and style
Know what size display you will present on
Avoid high contrast colors that touch each other, and bright blue or red (hard to focus eyes)
Check colors on projector and environment – may washout if not enough contrast in a light room
Have some light so audience can see to write and interact
Keep in mind the company or institution brand when thinking about creating a design template. Many schools have an official school color scheme that they would like faculty to use when representing the school. Usually they will have a site for you to get templates and logos. Think about how the audience is going to view your presentation. Colors that display well on your monitor might not look the same when displayed using a LCD projector. Sometimes colors, such as red colored text, will appear less/more saturated and lose your desired effect and become harder to read on the screen.
Also, your presentation may be compressed or reduced in size so it is important that your text is able to be read at the target display size. 18 Pt font size is about the smallest size that you want on your slide. You can either edit to reduce the amount of text or make two or more slides to accommodate the text. Try to create slides with high contrast between text and background. As a general rule you should plan on speaking for one minute per each slide. If you have 60 slides for a 20-minute presentation you will overwhelm and confuse your learners.
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9. Building a basic presentation in PowerPoint
Use a variety of materials
Keep your training active
PowerPoint presentation should be part of training, but not all
Note that screenshots on following slides may be from an earlier version of PowerPoint
In this section will introduce you to the basic features of PowerPoint, but you will not be an expert. You will need to practice building presentations and delivering the training material. While PowerPoint presentations are useful for training large groups or presenting an overview of a system, you should use other materials when presenting to individuals or a couple people in an information clinical setting. Also, remember to make your training active – the learner should also use the system not just what a video or see a couple screen shots. A PowerPoint presentation can be a part of your training, but it should not be all of your training.

10. Getting started using PowerPoint
Familiarize yourself with the PowerPoint workspace
Name and save your presentation
Add, rearrange, and delete slides
Add and format text
Apply a more appropriate look to your presentation
Add clip art, SmartArt graphics, and other objects
Add hyperlinks
Check the spelling and preview your presentation
Learn about preparing to deliver your presentation
There is a short tutorial written by Microsoft to get you started using PowerPoint This can be viewed on-line or printed. The topics covered in this online guide are: Familiarize yourself with the PowerPoint workspace, Name and save your presentation, Add, rearrange, and delete slides, Add and format text, Apply a more appropriate look to your presentation, Add clip art, SmartArt graphics, and other objects, Add hyperlinks, Check the spelling and preview your presentation, Learn about preparing to deliver your presentation.
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11. Beginning a presentation: use a blank presentation
Begin building a presentation using the blank presentation format. This allows you to concentrate on putting the content of the presentation on the slides quickly without worrying about the look and style.
5.1 Figure (Microsoft Office, 2007).
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12. Choose slide layout to place text and graphics
Use the slide layouts for all your slides. Notice that there are different layouts for title slides, section header slides, slides that compare two concepts, and general text slides. You can change the layout of an individual slide at anytime as you work on your presentation.
5.2 Figure (Microsoft Office, 2007).
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13. Add content: you can start typing in the slide placeholder
By adding text and other content to the slide placeholder you can easily format your text, color and font style, later in the design part. At this stage you can drop in your images and video too.
5.3 Figure (Microsoft Office, 2007).
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14. Apply PowerPoint design themes to your presentation
PowerPoint Design Themes control the background colors and shapes, font color and size, and font and colors for all your charts and graphs. This way your presentation will look professional. There are many Design Themes already in PowerPoint and you can find other themes online that have been designed by professional graphics designers. Until you become a PowerPoint expert you should rely on the themes provided with PowerPoint. Check with your corporate offices to see if they have a PowerPoint Theme.
5.4 Figure (Microsoft Office, 2007).
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15. Apply PowerPoint design themes to your presentation (Cont’d – 1)
To add style to your presentation click on the design tab and choose a theme. The themes can be edited from the format menu.
5.5 Figure (Microsoft Office, 2007).
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16. Type styles 5.6 Figure (Zimmerman, J., 2010).
There are two basic types of fonts, serif and sans serif. Serifs are the little curls and embellishments at the tips of each line or stroke. Sans (French for without) serif are plain fonts and the lines or strokes have no curls. Serif fonts are used primarily for reading long passages of text as in printed material in books and journals. For on-screen reading it is important to keep your text to a minimum and use san serif fonts.
5.6 Figure (Zimmerman, J., 2010).
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17. Type styles and sizes 5.7 Figure (Hall, M.V. and Zimmerman, J., 2012).
To give you an idea how fonts display on screen, take a look at the variations between these two fonts. For on-screen display I prefer to use san serif fonts like arial, helvetica, verdana because they are a little easier to read on the screen. Remember that you don’t want to put a lot of text on your slides – only the important points and use links for the audience to get additional information.
5.7 Figure (Hall, M.V. and Zimmerman, J., 2012).
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18. Type characteristics
Issues with cross platform presentations and missing fonts
‘Missing bullet types’ is a chief complaint
Safe font choices
Arial
Comic Sans
Courier
Courier New
Georgia
Helvetica
Tahoma
Times
Times New Roman
Trebuchet MS
Cross platform presentations (sharing between Mac and Windows) present a different problem. The fonts that you used in a PowerPoint presentation in one platform might not be available on the viewer’s computer. If the font is not available PowerPoint will open the presentation and substitute the original font for a similar font on the user’s computer. This usually shows up as missing or misaligned bullets and text. The best way to avoid this problem is to NOT use Mac or Windows specific fonts. Safe fonts to choose are: Arial, Comic Sans, Courier, Courier New, Georgia, Helvetica, Tahoma, Times, Times New Roman, and Trebuchet MS.
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19. Add a new slide and apply a new layout
Make sure that you use the slide layout to place all of your text, charts, graphs, and images. This will ensure that the formatting will be applied when you apply the slide theme. You can continue creating new slides for each major point in your presentation and in the next section of this unit we will learn how to use charts and images in PowerPoint.
5.8 Figure (Microsoft Office, 2007).
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20. How to construct a script or storyboard for a presentation
Unit 5: Building an Effective PowerPoint Presentation, Summary – Lecture a
How to construct a script or storyboard for a presentation
Designing a custom slide background for a training program
The appropriate use of color and text in a presentation
This concludes the lecture on building an effective PowerPoint presentation. The summary of this lecture is that you should be able to use the principles of effective PowerPoint design (given a particular training program and learner population) through the following objectives: number one, constructing a script or storyboard for a presentation; number two, designing a custom slide background for a training program; and number three, appropriately using color and text in a presentation.
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21. Building an Effective PowerPoint Presentation References – Lecture a
Altman, R. Why most PowerPoint presentations suck and how you can make them even better: second edition.
Retrieved on September 15th, 2010 from
Retrieved September 15th, 2010 from
Retrieved September 15th, 2010 from
Retrieved on September 15th, 2010 from
Tufte, R.E. The cognitive style of PowerPoint: pitching out corrupts within. Retrieved September 15th, 2010 from
Wempen, F. (2010). Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 bible. Wiley Publishing, Inc, Indianapolis, IN.
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22. Building an Effective PowerPoint Presentation References – Lecture a (Cont’d – 1)
Charts, Tables and Figures:
5.1 Figure: Retrieved from
5.2 Figure: Retrieved from
5.3 Figure: Retrieved from
5.4 Figure: Retrieved from
5.5 Figure: Retrieved from
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23. Building an Effective PowerPoint Presentation References – Lecture a (Cont’d – 2)
Charts, Tables and Figures:
5.6 Figure: Zimmerman, J. (2010). Types of characteristics. Department of Biomedical Informatics, Columbia University Medical Center. New York, NY.
5.7 Figure: Hall, M.V. and Zimmerman, J., 2012
5.8 Figure: Retrieved from
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24. Unit 5: Building an Effective PowerPoint Presentation, Lecture a
This material (Comp 20 Unit 5a) was developed by Columbia University, funded by the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology under Award Number IU24OC This material was updated in 2016 by Columbia University under Award Number 90WT0005.
No audio.
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