How to create slides for online courses
Create slides It’s a simple way to start putting together an online course and ensure that, even with little experience, you can produce a beautiful and professional looking material.
In this post, we’ve put together simple tips on text, formatting and slide design to help you start your course with a great presentation. Check it out!
Creating Slides: Tips for getting your presentation right
Creating slides is a practical way to organize educational content and a great option for those who want to create visual and didactic material quickly.
It is very likely that you have already used PowerPoint or Keynote at some point, and that’s all you need to create slides.
Both programs provide features that allow the use of text and images to develop well-organized and visually attractive lessons.
Furthermore, it is possible to integrate other media into your presentation, such as videos and audios, making it even richer.
You can also turn your slides into videos, adding audio with explanations to reinforce the written content.
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PowerPoint itself allows this to be done or you can even use free software, such as Windows Movie Maker.
Don’t worry about creating slides with sophisticated design, your main goal should be to convey information clearly. In these cases, the “less is more” rule is worth a lot.
Check out some tips on how to prepare a pleasant and efficient material for your online courses.
Create slides: Design
Let’s start with the look of your presentation.
A simple but well-designed design can improve your message and make it easier to understand.
When creating slides, try to use a maximum of 3 or 4 colors that generate a harmonious combination, preferably in your brand colors (if you have one).
But let’s start from the beginning:
Theme
Choose one design that complements the content. For example, a presentation about technology could have a modern, minimalist design, while one about sustainability could use shades of green and natural elements.
Be careful not to overload your presentation and your student’s mind. Choose clean, clear backgrounds that highlight the text and images.
PowerPoint offers several ready-made themes and you can create yours directly within the platform.
There are also paid or free template options on specialized websites such as SlideCarnival, Envato Elements, or Canva.
These templates are made by professional designers and save time.
Color palette
If you don’t already have a brand with defined colors to maintain the same pattern on your slides, don’t worry.
Select two to three colors: one dark and one light, because the contrast helps the image stand out, and a third complementary color to emphasize elements.
If you need help choosing the best combination, there are sites like Colour Lovers, Adobe Color and Coolors to assist you in this mission.
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Graphics
If your presentation contains a lot of data, use graphics to support the text and convey some ideas more clearly.
You can, of course, use ready-made graphs from other materials and sources, but this can break the pattern of your presentation in a visually unpleasant way.
Our suggestion is that, if it is a simple graphic, you use the PPT tools or other software you are using to draw it.
This way, you’ll have control over colors, typography, and more, creating a consistent, more professional presentation.
PowerPoint provides a wide range of charts which are perfect to help you with this task.
If you want something more elaborate, you can use the SmartArt, an internal tool that allows you to create infographics in a wide variety of models, such as cycles, hierarchies, and pyramids.
Videos
First tip, videos are always a good choice for online courses, and if you like the idea of creating one with your slides, start by making sure they are in the correct format.
For example, if you are going to make the video with aspect ratio 16:9, set your slides to the same format to ensure no information is cut off.
Overall, it’s super easy to insert video into Keynote and Powerpoint — just insert the file as you would an image.
It may be a good idea to set the video so that you have to click to play, preventing it from starting automatically when you are moving through the slides.
This way, you have more predictable control over when the video starts and prevent it from taking a long time to load and ending up freezing and skipping to the next slide.
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Images
Images help make your slides more dynamic and less tiring, in addition to offering visual support to what is being explained.
You can use photos that relate to the concept you are talking about and, ideally, are not complex in terms of composition.
Your photo can be a metaphor or something more literal, but it should be clear why the audience is looking at it.
We are in the age of memes and GIFs and yes, you can use them to break the ice or explain your ideas in a less formal way, if the subject and target audience allow it.
Whatever your options, be consistent. Using different image styles in the same presentation can distract your audience and make the overall look chaotic.
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Transitions
Use, but don’t abuse, transitions to “bring life” to the presentation. Here is another time when the “less is more” rule applies.
Although both the PPT and Keynote offer a variety of transitions, users often find its excessive use quite distracting and unsophisticated.
A simple “fade” effect between slides is more than effective and, most importantly, sufficient.
BONUS TIP: Choose just one transition effect, a very soft one, preferably, and use it on all slides.
Create slides: Text formatting
Texts for slides must be brief and get straight to the point.
Avoid long paragraphs, ideally organize the text into topics and short sentences.
As a reference, you can follow the 6×6 rule: arrange up to 6 lines of text on each slide, each with a maximum of 6 words per line.
Think about topic transitions. You don’t want every slide to look exactly the same, so create one style for slides that discuss the same idea and another when the topic changes.
For example, if your slides have a dark background with light text, when changing topics you can use a light background with dark text. This way, your presentation gains texture and your slides still look like part of the same family, but the audience gets a visual cue that we’re moving to a new question.
Another valuable tip is to use white space well (i.e. space without color, text and other elements). Using it correctly helps direct the viewer’s focus.
You can freshen up your presentation by adding extra margins, breaking up long paragraphs, and trying to use no more than half the slide for placing objects.
Font style
To create easy-to-read slides, opt for a classic font (avoiding decorative and cursive formats), such as Verdana, Arial, Calibri and Helvetica.
These fonts, in addition to being very readable, are common to all computers, which will prevent PowerPoint from substituting a random one if the person does not have the font used installed on their computer.
Important to highlight: There are several font options that can be downloaded for free on the internet, but remember that if it is little known, the person opening your file on another computer must have the same font installed to be able to view it.
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Font size
The size of the font used is a very important factor when creating slides.
The text must be well readable, but it should not take up too much space to avoid creating a confusing look and to support the use of images and graphs, when necessary.
We recommended the following:
- headers with at least 20pt.
- body text up to 18pt.
These sizes will provide students with a comfortable viewing experience and will ensure readability across multiple devices, such as laptops, smartphones, tablets and TVs.
BONUS TIP: To create slides more easily use the Slide Master feature to organize headings and subheadings. You can also use it to customize color schemes and add logos.
Create slides to improve your online courses
In online courses, you can create slides like study support material or as support for audio or video explanation.
This is an excellent resource to start structuring your classes in a simpler way that gives you greater confidence, since we are all familiar with PPT presentations.
Think about your main message, structure your topics, review your cadence and consistency, and then start thinking about your slides.
A presentation needs to be independent; Slides are just something you put on top of it to improve the student experience.
In addition to enriching your online courses, you can share this content on SlideShare to increase your authority and attract more audience.
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Now that you have the necessary tips to create beautiful and well-organized slides, there are no more excuses for leaving your online course to tomorrow.
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Create your course, upload it on Coursify.me and start making money doing what you like.
Complete eLearning platform, Coursify.me has all the features you need to customize your school page, integrate and import content from your computer and sites like Vimeo and YouTube, and more.
Visit our website, take a test and start now create slides and sell quality online courses.
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If you have any questions, just !
