Does It Need to Be In a PowerPoint?

Can Content Be Placed into Canvas Pages?

Leverage Canvas and help facilitate your students' learning! 

If the PowerPoint is used as a way to deliver main instructional content instead of summarizing the unit, consider placing content into Canvas pages.

This benefits the students (and you!) in several ways. 

1. In the Module view, assuming that content is chunked into pages, students have an opportunity to preview the amount of work needed to complete your unit, and manage their time accordingly. 
2. Managing accessibility is a lot easier in Canvas than in a PowerPoint. For example, specifying headings, describing images, and ensuring a logical reading order is easy to do in Canvas.
3. Students who rely on screen-readers or other assistive technologies can navigate content much easier in Canvas versus in a PowerPoint.
4. By placing content into Canvas pages, you can help students focus on your content, and streamline how students navigate. All students need to do is click on "Next" to get the information they need!

The History of Using PowerPoints

PowerPoint presentations were adopted during the 1990's by corporations as the application was part of the Microsoft Office package. In some respects, this helps explain the emphasis on executive summaries, one-liners, ubiquitous “deliverables” and action plans. Its way into academia was then helped by the increased pressure on faculty to deliver more teaching, and the increased demand from a more diverse student population to be more concretely guided through the jungle of knowledge. 

Effective Way to Use MS PowerPoint

PowerPoint can serve as a helpful student learning reinforcement tool when used effectively. PowerPoints are great in summarizing essential concepts and allow students to download and annotate lecture notes. A concern, though, is that PowerPoint presentations can potentially lock the learning flow. If the PowerPoint contains the main lecture with a multitude of concepts for the entire unit, will students have a moment to reflect on each topic or practice a new concept in between new topics? How can we facilitate student engagement in lecture-based PowerPoints?

Examples of How Lecture PowerPoints Can Be Used

PowerPoint can be used as a way to deliver essential information. Here are some ways PowerPoint can be used effectively in a course:

• Introduce or summarize higher-level concepts for each unit.
• If there are specific "pressure points" or known topics that are usually difficult for students to grasp, a PowerPoint can be used to provide simple animations and additional explanation. 
• To create simple animations to reinforce or summarize complex mechanisms or processes. 
• Do you have a friendly online course? Also, PowerPoint slides can hold only so much information. Try implementing voice-over narration for slides to humanize online learning experiences, and delve into complex images of concepts on certain PowerPoint slides.