PowerPoint Makeover

Choose Your Slides to Revise

1. Pick a slide deck for a presentation that you will use in your fall class that you feel needs some work. 
2. Select a set of slides from that deck that it usually takes you around 10 minutes to talk through - preferably including at least one slide that displays some sort of information in a chart, graph, table, or graphic.
3. Save those slides out as a separate file in PowerPoint, Google Slides or the slide tool of your choice. This is your new mini-deck.

Revise Your Mini-deck

We recommend making a copy of your mini-deck file so you have a "before" version to compare to your "after" version once you've completed your makeover.

1. Give yourself some space:

   • If your slides are square-ish, set your slide size to Widescreen. In PowerPoint, click the Design tab at the top, click on the "Slide Size" button and choose Widescreen 16:9. In Google Slides, click File then Page Setup, and choose Widescreen 16:9.
   • If you are using a background template that limits the amount of the slide you can use, switch to a plainer template that doesn't take up as much space (or no template at all).

2. Declutter:  Go through each slide and remove purely decorative images and tangential text. Decorative and tangential content distracts students from the point of the slide. If it's not critical that students know it, it doesn't need to be on the slide. If you think you may want to mention something that's not directly related, you can put the text in the notes area underneath the slide to remind you.

3. Break it down: One main point per slide. This means that some of your slides may become 2 or 3 or more separate slides. Don't worry. You're not making your verbal presentation any longer. Instead of talking about one slide trying to make 3 separate points for 6 minutes, you're talking about 3 slides with one main point each for 6 minutes. As you're making new slides, make sure to use the built-in layouts in PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Keynote so your slides are more accessible.

4. Assert with evidence: Following the Assertion-Evidence (A-E) format described in Unbulleting 2: The Assertion-Evidence Structure, rework each slide that has a point. (Some slides may provide examples or follow up the point on the previous slide.) State your main claim for the slide as the slide title and put the supporting evidence to your assertion as the slide content. Make sure to remove any tangential statements you come across that don't support your claim. 

5. Make it visual: Looking at the slides where you have an image (or slides where you'd like to have an image) think of a meaningful image for those slides following the description in Selecting Illuminative Visuals. Once you come up with an idea or two, try looking through Adobe Stock. Keeping to the same type of images, such as photographs, throughout helps give the presentation a more consistent look. You can also make charts or graphs directly in PowerPoint (Use charts and graphs in your presentation, Microsoft) or use SmartArt for nice visual diagrams (Create a SmartArt graphic, Microsoft) or in Google Slides using the Insert Chart or Diagram function.

6. Make it readable: Now that you've decluttered, broken apart longer slides, and reclaimed some space, check to see if the text you have left is readable on smaller screens. If you're presenting these slides live in a Zoom meeting or recording your presentation as a video, it's very likely that you will have students looking at these slides on a phone. To check, use the magnification slider at the bottom right of your PowerPoint window or the Zoom tool in Google Slides to shrink your slide until it's around the same size as your phone. If the text isn't readable, is it your font, your font size, or your font color?

   • Clear, plain fonts like Helvetica, Calibri, Times New Roman, and Garamond are easier to read. Using only one or two fonts in a presentation also makes it easier to read as the eye gets accustomed to that font.
   • Generally, a font size smaller than 24 pt. will be too difficult to read, even in a very clear font. 
   • As part of making an eye-catching slide, you may have used colored backgrounds or fonts. There needs to be enough color contrast between text and background for the text to be readable. Dark text on a light background is generally the easiest to read, though white text on a dark background is also good. It's the medium colored font on a different medium colored background that becomes unreadable. Also, always careful with red and green for those with color-blindness.

7. OPTIONAL Make it animated: If you have slides where you are talking about something that would be better where students didn't see text or images until you begin to talk about them, explore animations. You can fade in bullet points, images, labels or other annotations, and more using entrance effects in the animations tool in your slide program. You'll want to keep to the simple animations like Appear and Fade and avoid those like Swivel, Random Lines, and Bounce as sudden rapid movements and flashing can trigger migraines and other visual or cognitive reactions in viewers.