Alternatives to PowerPoint

PowerPoint presentations are typically designed to complement spoken instruction and can be an effective tool to support learning in the face-to-face classroom. However, uploading a PowerPoint file to your course to serve as a lecture and the main source of module content is not recommended since it will not provide the context and information students need when reading the presentation on their own. Providing a PowerPoint as a supplementary resource is fine as long as you ensure that it is accessible to students Links to an external site.. 

Strategies and tools are provided below to help you think creatively about how you might present your PowerPoint content in another format that will support student learning in your digital learning course. You may want to consider using a combination of the options provided below. 

Preferred Delivery Method - Canvas Pages

Watch the short video below (1:38) to learn about the benefits of using Pages to present content to students. 

Options to Adapt Content from a PowerPoint 

 Convert your PowerPoint to a Page

You may import your PowerPoint content directly into a Page in your course and then re-organize and format the content to support student learning and ensure accessibility. In your <Replace - Your LMS> , you may have access to a tool called the Import DOCX or HTML Tool (formerly known as ZAPT). 

 

Video Replace the PowerPoint Lecture with Video(s)

Consider replacing all or a portion of a PowerPoint lecture with an engaging video that is not a lecture. A couple of options for using video(s) to replace the PowerPoint lecture are provided below. 

Find Existing Videos

It is worth taking a few minutes to search for existing videos available through the <Replace -  Institution Name>

Libraries or online (e.g., YouTube) to see if you can find videos that could replace all or a portion of a lecture. Be sure to search for accurately captioned videos (Auto-generated captioned videos are less accurate and do not include punctuation.)

Create an Original Video

Alternatively, you could work with the <Replace -  Institution Name>to create an engaging and original video that explains a key topic or idea. 

Available Support:

  • Your subject librarian can help search for videos in the Library database. 
  • Your instructional designer can help you search for free videos available online.
  • The <Replace -  Institution Name Video Team> team can work with you to plan and produce creative and engaging videos.  

Create Video or Audio Mini-Lectures

Divide your lecture into smaller segments or chunks, and record multiple mini-lectures and embed them on a Page in your course. Did you know that student's attention span for a video is, at most, six (6) minutes (Guo, Kim, & Rubin, 2014)? Recording full lectures and posting them in your online course is not advised. Unless your recorded lecture is action-packed, students will most likely will not watch the entire video. 

A few of the different options for you to record a video or audio mini-lecture are provided below: