Advice from some professors on how students should NOT put together a PowerPoint ™ presentation for use in classwork at King’s College. By CELT and the King’s Faculty Spring 2004

Keep your title short.

Use consistent and clean transitions between slides.

Don’t use distracting backgrounds.

Do not put dark letters on a dark background.

Or light letters on a light background.

Make sure the typeface is large enough. Students should be able to read it from the back of the room.

But not too large!

Don’t mix fonts.

Use simple, readable fonts.

Have text appear in a clear and consistent fashion.

Use the upper 2/3 of the slide space. In many classrooms, students cannot see the bottom 1/3.

Each slide should have only one good point. Don’t get fancy with bullets. Bullets don’t always come out the same. §If you change points it can get confusing. Only use as many slides as you need.  Keep it simple.

Keep each slide to 2-3 lines. More than that is too much information. It can even be distracting.

Do not fill up the slide with text. The whole point of powerpoint is to highlight, provide key ideas, catch the eye -- not to do the entire presentation for you. Your verbal presentation should fill in the necessary information. Otherwise your audience will not really listen, they will be reading. If you want to give the students your entire text, why not just print it out and give it to them?

Do not “READ” your presentation, either from the computer or projection screens. Use printed out notes Don’t get stuck behind a podium either.

Face your audience.

Don’t block the view of the screen.

Don’t use too many graphics.

One per page is usually enough.

Avoid sound effects.

Print out handouts or Notes Pages.

Have a slide that concludes your presentation.