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25 Free Education PowerPoint Templates For Lessons, Thesis, and Online Lectures

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Today we have prepared for you 25 free education PowerPoint templates for your online lessons, lectures, thesis, and educational purposes. Some of them are suitable for multiple purposes, others are specifically designed for more niche topics, so we made sure there is something for everyone.

As usual, some of the websites that offer these free resources may require free registration. All templates are editable and compatible with PowerPoint and Google Slides .

1. Free Online Lessons PowerPoint Presentation Template

Here we have 20 free online education slides  by GraphicMama. With online lessons and homeschool presentations in mind, the educational slides have 2 color schemes. In addition, they feature multipurpose slides, infographics, quotes, practice, and others.

2. Free Meet Our Professors PowerPoint Template

What better way for teachers to break the ice at the beginning of a new class than by introducing themselves? This free template with a dark background and colorful shapes is ideal for the purpose. It has 34 different slides , is 100% editable, and includes 500 additional icons for further customizing your presentation.

3. Free Writing History Thesis PowerPoint Template

You might need to write a history thesis or prepare a history lesson for your classes. This template with 29 free editable slides has a beige background, doodle illustrations, and a suitable design.

4. Free Generation of ’27 Literature PPT Template

Generation ’27 is the name of a group of avant-garde poets and artists. They began to publish their works in the 1920s. 25 different slides for explaining Spanish literature to your student.

5. Free Kids Alphabet Blocks PowerPoint Template

With a fun LEGO-inspired design and vivid colors, the template is ideal for teaching lessons to younger students. It includes 48 editable slides and it’s available for free for schools and companies.

6. Free Steam Education PowerPoint Template

The design for this template is entirely based on the concept of steam education. It contains 48 free slides easy to modify.

7. Free Global Education Solution Template

A free global education solution presentation template with a suitable design of bulbs, earth, and cities. It contains 48 editable slides .

8. Free Dandelion Thesis PowerPoint Template

This free template was designed for students who need to defend their thesis before getting their PhD. It’s a good addition to the speech and features 24 editable slides to accompany your presentation.

9. Free Black Death Epidemic Thesis PowerPoint Template

A little bit niche, this design is dedicated to the 14th century Black Death and it’s ideal for the topic if you’re working on a thesis about the historical event. It has 23 free editable slides .

10. Free Lecture On Music PowerPoint Template

On a more positive note, the next free template has a design all about music. You can use it to prepare a lecture on music history, instruments, and everything about music in general.

11. Reading is Magical – Free PowerPoint Template

Kids discover the magic of reading. This free presentation design is ideal for teaching the younger audiences the importance of literature and make them fall in love with reading. It features 25 editable slides .

12. Free History of Architecture PowerPoint Template

Another niche topic for presentation. This free education template is designed to convey a historical feeling for every historical architecture lesson. It has 25 slides , easy to modify.

13. Free Geography PowerPoint Template

This free vintage geography PowerPoint template with old map background has 25 different slides and aims to assist presentations on every geography, history, travel, or politics lesson.

14. Free E-Learning PowerPoint Template

More for e-learning and online lessons. Here we have a free PowerPoint template that describes training with control over mobile. It features 48 slides , easy to customize and adapt to your presentation.

15. Chalk Free Education PowerPoint Template

A free educational template with a child reading a book and lovely chalk illustrations. This is a design that can express education through reading. 48 slides , ideal for literature lessons and presentations.

16. Free ABC Alphabet Blocks PPT Template

Here’s a free multipurpose PowerPoint design with alphabet blocks. Suitable for all kinds of educational presentations, the free template has 48 customizable slides with a color theme and 135 icons.

17. Free Science Education Center PowerPoint Template

It’s always a good day for science! This free presentation theme is based on a learning center structure. The background is blue, and it is conspicuous for the textures in the corners. It has 23 editable slides .

18. Free Handa Notebook Thesis Presentation

A free multipurpose thesis presentation design with a lovely notebook style. It has 34 slides with all you need to present your data and make it stand out, despite the casual design.

19. Free Building Siblings Relationships Educational Template

This free template has the topic of building siblings relationships in mind. It’s perfect for audiences from kindergarten, pre-school and elementary school.

20. Free Green Grass Open Book PowerPoint Template

A free Multipurpose template that suits lessons and presentations related to ecology, nature, agriculture, and environment. It has 48 editable slides and a color theme.

Presentation Design Tip:

The shorter you keep the text, the better. In fact, some specialists suggest that you shouldn’t use more than 5-6 words per slide . And sometimes, a single word combined with a powerful visual is enough to nail the attention of the students sitting in front of you and make them listen to what you have to say.

21. Free Online Library PowerPoint Template

The library concept gives the opportunity to fit any topic and adapt to any lesson. With 48 free editable slides , this template will suit school classes, business and commercial purposes.

22. Free Graduation PowerPoint Template

If you’re in need to prepare your students for graduation and educate them on the career paths that await after, this free template with 48 slides and infographics will suit the purpose.

23. Free Alphabet Blocks PowerPoint Presentation

A free educational presentation design of books being stacked up with alphabet block to top it off. It also consists of a light blue and orange color scheme. It includes 33 fully-editable slides and high-quality vector graphics.

24. Free Back to School PowerPoint Template

A classic even old-fashioned on purpose design that instantly grabs the attention. It has 36 free slides and infographics for educational purposes.

25. Free Desk Presentation Template

And last, we have this free hand-drawn template with a beautiful color scheme with 23 slides and a pinch of creativity that will suit multiple presentations.

And these were today’s 25 free educational templates for PowerPoint and Google Slides. Based on multipurpose or niche topics, the collection has something for everybody, so grab your favorites and create your awesome presentations.

In the meantime, if you’re in search of more resources for online classes, we have also prepared 60 colorful slides for that.

Final Words

We hope you enjoyed the hand-picked educational templates and found something that will adapt to your project perfectly.

While on the topic, why not check these other helpful online education-related articles.

• Top 25 Teaching Blogs To Help Your Educational Process
• How to Use Technology in Education: Save Time and Better Engagement
• How to use Zoom for Education [+ Useful Tips and Ideas]

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Online Education PPT, PowerPoint Presentation, and PDF

Online Education PPT, PowerPoint Presentation, and PDF : It is no wonder how people are opting for online degree programs all across the world through online education. Online learning has to be an extreme revolution in contemporary education. It has made great changes in the system and opened doors for a pool of opportunities for every person who wants to enhance their learning.

Nonetheless, online education is attached to some stereotypes. People think that the students from online classes are enough smart, they’re a couch potato, don’t get real degrees, and even, not perfect for brick and mortar kind of studies. These no-so-true aspects of online education may discourage some people and they continue to be stuck in the traditional system of education. Allow us to explain why online education is more beneficial and effective than people think.

We have five top-rated advantages of online education that will inspire you and make you reconsider your choice towards the type of education that you will get. Let us take a peek at these below.

You can learn whatever you want

When you pick up a course from traditional education, then it would include traveling far away from your home, coping up with the difficulties of the unknown city, and struggling in a competitive environment for learning. With the help of online education, you can go for any program or course present in the conventional four-year universities. For instance, you can take any course that meets with your interest and enhances knowledge even if you do not want to establish your career in this field. No matter where you live, you can find a course or even a degree program that you can follow from your place.

No need to attend all brick-and-mortar classes by sitting on an uncomfortable chair for long and suffering from back pain at the end of the day. You will not be restricted to attend any physical classes when you have applied for online learning. All lectures as well as associated materials have provided through the online platforms and you will access them from home comfort. In addition to this, there is no need to take transport from home to university and spend some extra bucks or dress up early in the morning. The list of convenience is never-ending.

Add great value to resume

Irrespective of your career stands at the moment, an online program always looks great and add value to the resume. It will display that you are dedicated to learning things and always excited to learn something new that enhances your knowledge as well as skills. A degree is a degree that is filled with all knowledge and no manager considers online education inferior to that of traditional ones. If you owe a degree from a prestigious university, then it will brighten your career quickly. Certainly, you will become a better candidate for the job promotion and make your resume look better.

Online Learning is affordable and convenient for everyone in comparison with the traditional kind of classes. You will earn a degree, enhance career, and increase your knowledge too.     

Content of the Seminar and PDF Online Education

• —WHAT IS ONLINE EDUCATION
• Advantages of online education —
• Disadvantages of online education —
• Future —Business probability
• —Conclusion

Here we are giving you Online Education Seminar and PPT with PDF. All you need to do is just click on the download link and get it.

Online Education and Seminar Free Download

Online Education PDF Free Download

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Online Education – Advantages and Disadvantages

• by Refresh Science
• December 22, 2021 January 22, 2023

Online education is very popular recently due to this pandemic situation. All educational institutions starting practicing online courses considering the safety of the students. There are both advantages and disadvantages in online educations. let us see about them in detail:

Pros of Online education

Time management:.

Time management is one of the major pros of online education. Because most of the students spent lot of time in travelling especially in metro cities.

Various courses are covered under one roof. This is also related to time management. Where students are in a need to move to various locations for their respective classes.

Due to the above mentioned reasons students can learn wide courses in a short duration.

Download Pros and Cons of Online Education PowerPoint Presentation:

Note : If the download link is not working, kindly let us know in comment section.

Affordable:

Online education is cost efficient. It is like a one time investment i.e. buying a laptop or a tablet. Other than that the cost of the online courses are very affordable compared to normal coaching classes.

It is very convenient and flexible not only for students but also for the parents to take care of the kids. The students can study at comfort at their home .

Online course are very much interactable since each students are monitored individually compared to classroom courses. Therefore the ability to concentrate in the subject is also increased.

It helps in improving self discipline among students. It also helps in self motivation which results in higher productivity.

Multi tasking:

Online courses are a boom to people’s who discontinued their studied for the purpose of career. Since it is flexible one can concentrate both in studies as well as in career.

Students can spent more time in their area of interest or in hobbies and also interact with people who is having same area of interest with great knowledge anywhere across the country.

Techno impact:

Since it is a virtual mode of training it is very simple and easy to understand even very complex topics. We can say that the methodology of teaching has changed as per students wish.

Other advantages:

So far we have seen the advantages of online education from students point of view. There are also more advantages other than above mentioned, let’s check it:

Online education is more advantageous to educational institution as the maintenance cost is totally reduced. Maintenance includes cost of classrooms, Electricity cost , Water cost, cost of study materials, house keeping charges and so on.

Teachers also prepare for their course in form of soft copies which can be used for future courses which reduces time and it is long-lasting.

Most of physical classroom demands are reduced such as desk, paper, pen etc.. since it is digitalized it is completely paperless.

For working parents it is very easy to make their kids concentrate on studies and take care of them. Since students are present at home all days and they can learn at flexible time duration at the convenience of the parents.

Cons of Online Education

We all know as a coin has two sides there are also two sides for online education. let’s see the cons of online education:

• Online education is not available at ease for many students. Mainly for students from rural areas. Because it requires high internet speed which is not available in rural areas.
• There are also students who cannot afford for costly electric gadgets used for class.
• Students are isolated from the outer world. They are hooked up in single room with the technology in front of them. The students are not even interested in exploring the outer world.
• As the students are isolated they become more stressful which causes many health issues.
• Technology not only teaches good things it paves way for many bad things too. There is a chance for students to get distracted by using unwanted sites.
• If there is any technical issues then it will be a huge loss for the students. There is a chance for them to miss the class or not able to attend the class until rectifying it.
• Online class means more screen time therefore there is a chance for eyesight related issues.
• Due to social isolation students lack communication skills.

• Only theoretical skills are well developed and there is a lack in practical skills. If it is a physical classroom practical training will also be provided simultaneously.
• There is a tremendous reduction in physical activities among the students. Whereas in classroom coaching separate time is allotted for the purpose of drills or yoga etc.
• During exam time it is difficult for the examiner to avoid cheating by the students. Only if the student is self disciplined the exam will be in a fair manner else there is more chance for malpractice.

As we know Online education is one of the big life saver during this pandemic situation . Parents are worried about the safety of the children and not ready to send them to educational institutions. They are also worried about the education of the children. Due to online education both the safety of the students as well as education is balanced.

Below are some online learning sites which you can refer:

• Cloudacademy
• Pluralsight

4 thoughts on “Online Education – Advantages and Disadvantages”

Thanks for the presentation!

Please keep tips to remember also I amnot able to remember from more than 4 days

And also it d best but pls fix it which I told before

Thank you for the presentation

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• Published: 25 January 2021

Online education in the post-COVID era

• Barbara B. Lockee 1  

Nature Electronics volume  4 ,  pages 5–6 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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• Science, technology and society

The coronavirus pandemic has forced students and educators across all levels of education to rapidly adapt to online learning. The impact of this — and the developments required to make it work — could permanently change how education is delivered.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the world to engage in the ubiquitous use of virtual learning. And while online and distance learning has been used before to maintain continuity in education, such as in the aftermath of earthquakes 1 , the scale of the current crisis is unprecedented. Speculation has now also begun about what the lasting effects of this will be and what education may look like in the post-COVID era. For some, an immediate retreat to the traditions of the physical classroom is required. But for others, the forced shift to online education is a moment of change and a time to reimagine how education could be delivered 2 .

Looking back

Online education has traditionally been viewed as an alternative pathway, one that is particularly well suited to adult learners seeking higher education opportunities. However, the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has required educators and students across all levels of education to adapt quickly to virtual courses. (The term ‘emergency remote teaching’ was coined in the early stages of the pandemic to describe the temporary nature of this transition 3 .) In some cases, instruction shifted online, then returned to the physical classroom, and then shifted back online due to further surges in the rate of infection. In other cases, instruction was offered using a combination of remote delivery and face-to-face: that is, students can attend online or in person (referred to as the HyFlex model 4 ). In either case, instructors just had to figure out how to make it work, considering the affordances and constraints of the specific learning environment to create learning experiences that were feasible and effective.

The use of varied delivery modes does, in fact, have a long history in education. Mechanical (and then later electronic) teaching machines have provided individualized learning programmes since the 1950s and the work of B. F. Skinner 5 , who proposed using technology to walk individual learners through carefully designed sequences of instruction with immediate feedback indicating the accuracy of their response. Skinner’s notions formed the first formalized representations of programmed learning, or ‘designed’ learning experiences. Then, in the 1960s, Fred Keller developed a personalized system of instruction 6 , in which students first read assigned course materials on their own, followed by one-on-one assessment sessions with a tutor, gaining permission to move ahead only after demonstrating mastery of the instructional material. Occasional class meetings were held to discuss concepts, answer questions and provide opportunities for social interaction. A personalized system of instruction was designed on the premise that initial engagement with content could be done independently, then discussed and applied in the social context of a classroom.

These predecessors to contemporary online education leveraged key principles of instructional design — the systematic process of applying psychological principles of human learning to the creation of effective instructional solutions — to consider which methods (and their corresponding learning environments) would effectively engage students to attain the targeted learning outcomes. In other words, they considered what choices about the planning and implementation of the learning experience can lead to student success. Such early educational innovations laid the groundwork for contemporary virtual learning, which itself incorporates a variety of instructional approaches and combinations of delivery modes.

Online learning and the pandemic

Fast forward to 2020, and various further educational innovations have occurred to make the universal adoption of remote learning a possibility. One key challenge is access. Here, extensive problems remain, including the lack of Internet connectivity in some locations, especially rural ones, and the competing needs among family members for the use of home technology. However, creative solutions have emerged to provide students and families with the facilities and resources needed to engage in and successfully complete coursework 7 . For example, school buses have been used to provide mobile hotspots, and class packets have been sent by mail and instructional presentations aired on local public broadcasting stations. The year 2020 has also seen increased availability and adoption of electronic resources and activities that can now be integrated into online learning experiences. Synchronous online conferencing systems, such as Zoom and Google Meet, have allowed experts from anywhere in the world to join online classrooms 8 and have allowed presentations to be recorded for individual learners to watch at a time most convenient for them. Furthermore, the importance of hands-on, experiential learning has led to innovations such as virtual field trips and virtual labs 9 . A capacity to serve learners of all ages has thus now been effectively established, and the next generation of online education can move from an enterprise that largely serves adult learners and higher education to one that increasingly serves younger learners, in primary and secondary education and from ages 5 to 18.

The COVID-19 pandemic is also likely to have a lasting effect on lesson design. The constraints of the pandemic provided an opportunity for educators to consider new strategies to teach targeted concepts. Though rethinking of instructional approaches was forced and hurried, the experience has served as a rare chance to reconsider strategies that best facilitate learning within the affordances and constraints of the online context. In particular, greater variance in teaching and learning activities will continue to question the importance of ‘seat time’ as the standard on which educational credits are based 10 — lengthy Zoom sessions are seldom instructionally necessary and are not aligned with the psychological principles of how humans learn. Interaction is important for learning but forced interactions among students for the sake of interaction is neither motivating nor beneficial.

While the blurring of the lines between traditional and distance education has been noted for several decades 11 , the pandemic has quickly advanced the erasure of these boundaries. Less single mode, more multi-mode (and thus more educator choices) is becoming the norm due to enhanced infrastructure and developed skill sets that allow people to move across different delivery systems 12 . The well-established best practices of hybrid or blended teaching and learning 13 have served as a guide for new combinations of instructional delivery that have developed in response to the shift to virtual learning. The use of multiple delivery modes is likely to remain, and will be a feature employed with learners of all ages 14 , 15 . Future iterations of online education will no longer be bound to the traditions of single teaching modes, as educators can support pedagogical approaches from a menu of instructional delivery options, a mix that has been supported by previous generations of online educators 16 .

Also significant are the changes to how learning outcomes are determined in online settings. Many educators have altered the ways in which student achievement is measured, eliminating assignments and changing assessment strategies altogether 17 . Such alterations include determining learning through strategies that leverage the online delivery mode, such as interactive discussions, student-led teaching and the use of games to increase motivation and attention. Specific changes that are likely to continue include flexible or extended deadlines for assignment completion 18 , more student choice regarding measures of learning, and more authentic experiences that involve the meaningful application of newly learned skills and knowledge 19 , for example, team-based projects that involve multiple creative and social media tools in support of collaborative problem solving.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, technological and administrative systems for implementing online learning, and the infrastructure that supports its access and delivery, had to adapt quickly. While access remains a significant issue for many, extensive resources have been allocated and processes developed to connect learners with course activities and materials, to facilitate communication between instructors and students, and to manage the administration of online learning. Paths for greater access and opportunities to online education have now been forged, and there is a clear route for the next generation of adopters of online education.

Before the pandemic, the primary purpose of distance and online education was providing access to instruction for those otherwise unable to participate in a traditional, place-based academic programme. As its purpose has shifted to supporting continuity of instruction, its audience, as well as the wider learning ecosystem, has changed. It will be interesting to see which aspects of emergency remote teaching remain in the next generation of education, when the threat of COVID-19 is no longer a factor. But online education will undoubtedly find new audiences. And the flexibility and learning possibilities that have emerged from necessity are likely to shift the expectations of students and educators, diminishing further the line between classroom-based instruction and virtual learning.

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Lockee, B.B. Online education in the post-COVID era. Nat Electron 4 , 5–6 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-020-00534-0

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• Teaching with Technology

Creating the Perfect PowerPoint for Online Teaching

• May 9, 2013
• Errol Craig Sull

While other forms of visual presentations have cropped up—such as Prezi and Empressr —PowerPoint remains the presentation software of choice. Yet many folks develop PowerPoint presentations without fully understanding all components of the software and/or presenter tricks that could make for much more effective PowerPoint presentations.

The suggestions that follow will help you create effective PowerPoint presentations.

Know your audience. You must be fully aware of what the audience is expecting from your PowerPoint; also, be aware of your audience’s education level—the complexity of your text and visuals must match what the audience will understand.

Create an outline to help you develop your PowerPoint presentation. The outline gives your PowerPoint the structure it requires, allows you to develop a balanced array of visuals, and gives you an initial look at the time required for students to view your PowerPoint slides. Your PowerPoint should not be so long that the audience loses interest, and if you have a set amount of time, you need be sure your PowerPoint fits within that time.

Become familiar with all features of PowerPoint. PowerPoint is a powerful presentation tool with many features that allow you to jazz up your slides, import other slides, add audio and video, change background styles and colors, etc. Spend whatever time it takes to fully familiarize yourself with all that PowerPoint offers; you’ll be able to develop a more professional and engaging PowerPoint presentation—something your audience will appreciate.

Do not become dazzled with the “whistles and bells” of PowerPoint. It is easy to be seduced by the over-the-top features of PowerPoint, such as transition and animation. Yet too much use of these will distract from the primary purpose of your PowerPoint: getting important information to your audience in an easy-to-understand manner. Certainly, some of these fun tools can help make your PowerPoint more engaging and can spotlight especially salient items in your presentation. But be careful that your PowerPoint does not turn into a Disney cartoon, resulting in a presentation that is less than effective. Overall, keep the design simple and basic.

Limit each slide to a few bulleted points. Your audience needs to quickly understand what you are presenting. Many folks load up each slide with far too much text. This defeats the purpose of a PowerPoint presentation. Keep each slide to no more than four bulleted items, with each item a maximum of one line in length. If you need to add more information, you have two options: (1) have some notes (use your outline for this) and simply add the material—by voice—when appropriate; and (2) at the bottom of each blank slide there is a section called “Speaker’s Notes”—you can add in here what you want to say to your audience beyond what they see on a slide (only you can see the Speaker’s Notes).

Use graphics to highlight your information, not overtake it. A visual on a slide won’t take the place of your text—and it shouldn’t—but it can highlight a point you are making and help to engage the audience. Have a nice balance of visuals and colors, and spend some time searching for the spot-on, already-created visual. (There are many sources: online, your own, items you’ve scanned, etc.) You also can create your own graphs and/or charts and use screenshots of items.

Your voice can truly bring a PowerPoint to life. In an online PowerPoint presentation, the audience hears more of your voice than if you were in a room with them. Thus, each clearing of your throat, sip of water, “um” and “uh,” and licking of the lips can often be heard. Speak slowly; be sure to vary your tone (no one enjoys a monotone!); stay enthusiastic and excited about the topic; and use your voice to bring audience attention to important points, closing of a subject, introduction of the next slide, etc.

Always do a slideshow run of your PowerPoint to view it as an audience member. You’ll find one of the drop-down menu items on the top tool bar of PowerPoint is called “Slideshow.” Here you have various choices that allow you to view your PowerPoint as a slideshow. Be sure to do this so you will see what your audience will see and you can quickly pick up on items that might need to be corrected, such as typos, font size, size of or lack of visuals, too much text on a slide, length of time for the PowerPoint, etc. And for each slide, make a note (e.g., #14—correct spacing; #15—OK; etc.). Once completed, make the changes and then run the slideshow again.

Check spelling, grammar, spacing, font size and style, etc. It is crucial that all components of writing be perfect. Be sure that the font size and style are easy to read. Consider line spacing and visual placement.

Always do a trial run with at least one other person. While we will see items that need to be corrected or tweaked, rarely do we see them all. Have one person or more look at it to get their input. You’ll be surprised at how many helpful suggestions you will receive about things you had not considered or just didn’t see. Your audience will benefit from this extra input.

Errol Craig Sull has been teaching online courses for 17 years and has a national reputation in the subject, and in writing about and conducting workshops on distance learning. He is currently putting the finishing touches on two online-teaching books.

Excerpted from Teaching Online With Errol: An Online Educator Must: Creating the Perfect PowerPoint! Online Classroom, 12.4 (2012): 6.

• Errol Craig Sull has been teaching online courses for more than 15 years and has a national reputation in the subject, both writing and conducting workshops on it. He is currently putting the finishing touches on his next book—How to Become the Perfect Online Instructor.

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Optimizing PowerPoint for E-learning

By Jeff Cobb .  Last Updated on September 29, 2023

Times have changed and the world has fully opened its eyes to the value of e-learning. Traditional learning methods that require you to be at a certain time and place can be an inconveniencing interruption to our often-busy schedules. And from an instructional perspective, you have to balance creativity with practicality.

So that begs the question, how can you create engaging courses that minimize interruptions to our schedules and are convenient for both the learner and instructor?

If you’ve ever created lectures, presentations, or even webinars using Microsoft PowerPoint, then you’ve overcome more than half of the e-learning curve. But while PowerPoint is a great tool, it’s not adequate on its own to captivate learners.

In this article, I’m going to show you how to convert your presentations into an on-demand and fully active online experience.  

PowerPoint vs. E-learning

PowerPoint is a classic presentation tool that has its place in face-to-face learning. But because it naturally follows a linear presentation structure – that is, each slide in the presentation is presented in a predefined sequence – it allows for minimal audience participation. However, in the classroom environment, this lack of interactivity is often supplemented with questions, (marked) assessments, group activities, and assignments. In this way, PowerPoint merely supports the instructor, who picks up the slack and effectively delivers the content by speaking, using body language, and interacting with the audience directly in real-time.

Unfortunately, that’s why you see so many poorly-designed and un-engaging PowerPoint presentations.

With all those bulleted lists and cheesy clip art, your PowerPoints might merely function as cue cards in the classroom. But this type of presentation structure does not smoothly transition into asynchronous e-learning. Still, that doesn’t mean that you need to throw your PowerPoints out and start from scratch. They still give you a solid foundation to build up from.

Before we get into the particulars of how to optimize your PowerPoint presentations for e-learning, let’s look at some key e-learning criteria and determine to what degree PowerPoint fulfills them.

As you can see, there are some clear similarities between e-learning courses and PowerPoint presentations. The main difference is that PowerPoint relies more heavily on the instructor to convey information more effectively, whereas e-learning relies exclusively on the objects within the courses to do so. To bridge this gap, we need to rethink our PowerPoint designs without factoring in an instructor. We need to give them a full-makeover.

In the rest of the article, I’m going to show you how to accomplish this.

Giving Your PowerPoint a Makeover

Believe it or not, the success of an e-learning course can largely be attributed to its visual appeal. Don’t simply rely on the topic and content of your course to carry your learners through. You don’t just want to pay attention to the visual aspect from a branding and marketing perspective: you’ll also need to leverage layouts, colors, images, etc. to enhance or emphasize key messages throughout the lessons.

Style and Colors

The “style” pertains to the overall look and feel of the course. One key element of style is color. Others include the layout, theme, visuals, etc.

One mistake people make when creating the style of their course is making decisions too hastily or mindlessly. Your favorite color combination might be red and black, but it’s not about you – it’s about your target audience. So, first things first: you’ll need to evaluate your audience using demographics like age, sex, education, prerequisite knowledge, etc. Moreover, you’ll need to consider your style from a business perspective and how it contributes to the “flavor” of your organization.

Once you’ve made some of these executive decisions, then you can descend from aerial view and start considering how your content can be broken down into elements and then designate colors. As a general rule of thumb, you’ll want to start with a light-colored background with dark-colored text for easy online viewing. Then, select a few appropriate colors for things like arrows, navigation buttons, indicators, etc. Your color palette(s) can and should be documented and saved for future courses.

Themes, Layouts, and Backgrounds

When giving your PowerPoint a makeover, you’ll have to incorporate themes for different “learning events”. For example, your e-learning course might have unique slides for your table of contents, title, presentation, interactions, and quizzes. Think about the elements that would naturally exist on each of these types of slides and design layouts that logically organize these elements. This might involve redesigning some of your slides or creating a theme for a new type of slide that you’ll be including in your e-learning course.

Each layout should have a unique background for each of these learning events. If you have graphic design skills that’s great, but if not – no problem! You can also create professional looking themes by keeping things simple. Look online for simple layouts/templates that might contain a title and text box. Or for your assessments, find and/or emulate a layout that has a question area and designated space for multiple choice options. Would you like to incorporate questions that incorporate images? Then factor that into your theme design.

And of course, maintain the same color scheme/palette that you determined for your style/branding.  

Making Your Slides Less Dense

When you’re creating e-learning courses, to keep your learners engaged, you have to “keep it moving”. This means that your audience shouldn’t be staring at the same slide for too long. From an instructional design perspective , dense slides do your learning audience a disservice because they likely over-rely on one type of learning style, such as auditory (audio), verbal (text), or visual (images).

So, how do you go about thinning things out in a systematic manner that doesn’t detract from your audience’s learning potential?

Well first develop or review your learning objectives. Keep them in mind as you comb through your content, eliminating any extraneous, redundant, or irrelevant information. If your content is text-heavy or full of bulleted lists, as is typical with PowerPoint presentations, then consider turning them into learning interactions. For example, the audience might have to check off a checkbox next to each bullet point before proceeding to the next slide, and in other cases, or – to cater to tactile learners – you can turn these bulleted “steps” into a process, tabs, or accordion interaction.

PowerPoint presentations tend to contain fewer slides that are highly dense because the instructor usually tackles each element on the slide systematically to break things down and provide the story behind the slide. Because the instructor is using his/her voice and intonation to emphasize important aspects of the message, while simultaneously asking and engaging the audience’s questions, learners can stay engaged and effectively cement knowledge.

On the other hand, e-learning slides tend to be “thin” and contain a lot of “white space” so that only the most important elements on the slide are showing. The learner should be able to logically assemble the “story” behind the slide with minimal text, some images to reinforce the message, and possibly audio.

Incorporating Meaningful/Relevant Visuals

While your PowerPoint presentation most likely includes some degree of images and visuals, you’re going to have to amplify them for your e-learning course. Part of the value of visuals is that they can package a thousand words, which – as previously discussed – can make your e-learning slides less dense.

Another reason why visuals are important is because most of us are naturally inclined towards processing visual information. Visuals can add meaning and therefore reinforce learning. You can create your own simple objects and diagrams using PowerPoint shapes. And, of course, there are also plenty of resources that you can use to source images, characters, infographics, and diagrams.

But the main thing is ensuring that your visuals are meaningful and relevant. An overabundance of visuals detracts from your message and can cause confusion. They should be chosen with purpose . So, if you haven’t clarified your course purpose and learning objectives yet, make sure that they’re established before you start incorporating images and determining your overall style.

Resources for PowerPoint Templates and ID Art

The internet has countless resources to help professionals and newcomers alike hit the ground running. From templates, backgrounds, and audio, to icons, graphic assets, and fonts – everything can be sourced.

Here’s a list of 10 great e-learning assets and resources:

• eLearningArt – A vast library of eLearning images, illustrations, characters, graphics, and templates.
• eLearning Brothers – Similar to eLearningArt. It offers character cutouts, eLearning and PowerPoint templates, images, icons, and stock assets.
• Articulate Community – They offer a variety of templates for a wide range of presentation software, as well as course design assets (backgrounds, buttons, fonts, icons, etc.).
• Public Domain Image Resources – There are many images and other resources available online that are in the public domain. This link will bring you to an exhaustive Wikipedia list of these free resources. Just be sure to follow their credit attribution instructions.
• LA County Museum of Art – This resource provides over 20,000 free images. Any image that displays a “Download” button is free for the taking.
• eLearning Asset – They offer a host of characters in office, medical, and industrial work environments, as well as cartoon mascots, office backgrounds, human silhouettes, and other freebies.
• The Getty is a search gateway that yields a manifold of art images in the public domain.
• PresentationGo offers a wide assortment of both free and paid-for Powerpoint/presentation templates, charts/tables, diagrams, graphics, etc.

Bringing Your PowerPoint Presentations to Life

There are ways that you can bring your PowerPoint presentation to life and have it captivate your audience on its own accord. PowerPoint has way more features than are often leveraged by presenters/instructors. You have the ability to incorporate a wide range of multimedia and even animate your slides and include transitions.

You can incorporate your own images or source them, record and edit audio, upload videos from your computer, or embed videos from external sources.

The easiest way to insert images is to copy and paste them or save and import them into your PowerPoint. Simply go to Insert -> Images .

As you can see, the Insert menu gives you ample options. For example, you can also insert shapes, audio, and video. The key is to engage as many learning styles as possible. Not everyone learns best with words and speech, but almost everyone responds better to visuals than text, so refrain from too many bulleted lists. They have their place, but use them wisely. For example, you can even treat each bullet point as an “object” that can be animated to appear in time with your narration/speech.

You can take advantage of PowerPoint’s many Entrance effects. These effects are used to introduce new objects (e.g., text, images, graphics, etc.) onto the screen. For example, you can have objects “Fade in”, “Fly in” from a specific location on the screen, or simply “Appear.”

Conversely, you have a wide assortment of “Exit” effects for when you’d like objects to disappear from the screen.

In addition, you can use Emphasis effects, which “underline” or “highlight” certain objects on the screen to direct your audience’s attention to a key point or message.

You can even create path animations that move objects about on the screen. This is probably the closest to an “animation”, as traditionally defined.

All of these animations/animation types can be combined and timed to appear after or concurrently with one another. You can even set the duration of each animation and specify how long to delay an animation if it’s proceeding after another.

You can also leverage PowerPoint’s transition effects when transitioning between slides. For example, if you’re teaching a writing class, presenting a new work, or conducting a literary analysis, then you might want each slide transition to emulate turning a page in a book.

As you can see, there are many ways to bring your PowerPoint presentations to life. But there are ways that you can also infuse interactivity into your presentation. Typical PowerPoint presentations involve the learner progressing “on-click”. While this infuses some degree of tactile learning, you can take things up a notch by providing navigation. Not only does it take you away from the linear progression that’s so endemic to PowerPoints, but you can have learners essentially “choose their own adventure”.

That notwithstanding, interactivity is a prime feature of e-learning. So, even with navigation links, your PowerPoints are bound to fall short in this category. Thus, to truly optimize your PowerPoint for e-learning, you’re going to have to convert them or use them in combination with an e-learning authoring tool.

In the next section, I’m going to show you how to leverage PowerPoint for e-learning.

Leveraging PowerPoint to Create and Sell E-learning

While PowerPoint is a powerful tool for instructors, the presentations on their own make for rather poor and largely ineffective e-learning. Nonetheless, you might have noticed that a large percentage of e-learning courses take on a slides-based approach. Webinars, employee training or academic courses, and even videos are often created with slides. So, at its foundation, PowerPoints are essentially e-learning presentations with minimal to no interactivity.

For example, you can’t use PowerPoint to create drag and drop, dropdown, and/or process interactions. Nor can they be leveraged to create interactive quizzes – a near must-have in e-learning ( how else can you determine if learning objectives are being met? ). Consequently, PowerPoints are often used as storyboards for later development with eLearning authoring tools. As a matter of fact, many industry-standard e-learning authoring tools, such as Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, and iSpring Suite, can readily convert PowerPoints into e-learning. ( More on these course creation tools here .)

Converting PowerPoints with Adobe Captivate

Adobe Captivate is a great e-learning authoring tool that requires a moderate level of technical know-how to wrap your head around it. As soon as you open Adobe Captivate, you’ll have the option to create a new presentation by importing from PowerPoint. If you’re on a PC, Adobe Captivate will enable you to edit your slides and add interactivity within an internal “PowerPoint environment.” However, if you’re on a Mac, then you’ll need to link your Captivate presentation to your external PowerPoint file, otherwise termed the “source file”.

Here are a few things you’ll need to note when importing your PowerPoints into Captivate.

• Captivate doesn’t retain the individual objects on your PowerPoint slides, so if you have some text and images in your slides, it all becomes one flat, static image, kind of like a background image. So, ideally, your PowerPoint presentation should be ready to publish. All you’d be doing is adding quizzes/knowledge checks and incorporating interactive graphics.
• Any animations you create in PowerPoint are imported in Captivate as Shockwave Flash files (swf). However, at the end of 2020, Adobe will no longer be supporting these files.
• The latest 2019 version of Captivate enables you to import PowerPoints as a responsive project. That is, it converts the swf files into an HTML5 format, meaning your courses can be viewed on mobile devices ( a very important development/consideration! )

Converting PowerPoints with Articulate Storyline

Articulate Storyline is an intuitive e-learning authoring tool that can seamlessly convert your PowerPoint presentations into e-learning. However, if you’re a Mac user, then you’re out of luck. This awesome software is only supported on PCs. But one aspect that makes Storyline a superior choice to Captivate is that when you import your slides, it retains all the individual objects on each slide.

In other words, you can pick up right where you left off and continue developing your course without having to cut/copy and paste individual objects. Moreover, I find that Storyline’s interactive graphics are much more attractive and “up to date” than Captivate’s.

Aside from that, not many differences lie between the two authoring tools.

Converting PowerPoints with iSpring Suite

Another standard authoring tool that enables you to optimize your PowerPoints for eLearning is iSpring Suite . Of the options we’ve thus far discussed, iSpring Suite perfectly integrates with PowerPoint. That is, it is a PowerPoint-based tool kit that almost entirely preserves the PowerPoint interface while adding the extra functionality required to create full-fledged e-learning courses.

Once you’ve installed iSpring , it appears as a tab in the PowerPoint ribbon, as shown below:

You can record and add media using your external/built-in microphone and webcam. Whether you want to create a screencast, talking head video, or do a picture-in-picture video that combines the two types simultaneously, you can do everything out of iSpring. And of course, you can upload, import, or embed external videos.

And as with any full-fledged e-learning authoring tool, you can create quizzes, interactive graphics, dialogue simulations, and branched scenarios to immerse your audience.

Publishing Your E-learning

You have many options to publish your e-learning. You can always export your PowerPoint presentation as a movie and post it to your website, YouTube, and/or share it on social media. But if you’re looking for a more professional mode of delivery that’ll enable you to track student progress, garner course and learner analytics, and even monetize your courses, then you’re better off with a learning management system (LMS) .

LMSes are great, as most people learn on the go. No one’s going to download a course to their mobile device, as they consume too much storage space. Moreover, as the course creator , LMSes give you the power to administrate, receive assignments and quizzes, and take on a more active role in teaching your learners. On the contrary, if you’re looking for a relatively-hands free solution, then an LMS enables you to create learning paths and drip course content periodically or based on student progress, generate grades or scores, and even issue completion certificates!

Any e-learning authoring tool that’s worth its salt will allow you to export and publish the final product in a way that seamlessly integrates with an LMS. There are “languages” or “technical standards” by which an LMS can effectively “communicate” with your course content. SCORM is one of the most widely-used technical standards, but you also have AICC and newer standards like TinCan.

Authoring tools such as Captivate, Storyline, and iSpring are able to publish e-learning in any one of these standards in order to retain interactivity. So, when choosing an LMS system , ensure that it is compatible with the format in which you published your course. For example, Thinkific doesn’t support any of these technical standards, whereas Flora LMS only supports SCORM.

PowerPoint for E-learning: Key Takeaways

• PowerPoint is best used as a supplementary tool for instructors. Therefore, it enables passive versus active learning. It would be hard to keep asynchronous learners engaged and hold them accountable for their learning if you used PowerPoint as a standalone e-learning course.
• PowerPoint accommodates a wide range of multimedia, including animation and transition effects, but to truly make your course interactive (quizzes, drag and drops, interactive graphics, etc.), you’ll need to convert your PowerPoint to e-learning by way of an e-learning authoring tool.
• Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, and iSpring Suite are powerful, industry-standard authoring tools that can easily convert your PowerPoint slides into e-learning. But because of Captivate’s limitations with retaining objects, you’ll have much less headaches working with Storyline and especially iSpring.
• Consider publishing your course to an LMS system. If your course contains interactive elements and features, then be sure to export it as a SCORM, TinCan, or AICC package and ensure that your LMS supports these formats.

By Sydney Mansaray for Learning Revolution

• iSpring Suite: Create Professional Courses Using PowerPoint
• How to Record a PowerPoint Presentation

Title image by Oberholster Venita from Pixabay

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1 thought on “optimizing powerpoint for e-learning”.

Nice! Even with e-learning, PowerPoint is still a program that is used by a majority of people. May I suggest you take a look at the free iSlide PPT add-in? It will save you and your readers a lot of time! For example, read this article below. Just register an email address to get started for free and start using thousands of templates, icons, vectors, images and more! islide-powerpoint.com/en/support/tips-ideas/15-minutes-en Please contact me if you have any questions that I can help you with. Regards, Silvia

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Educationaly Template for PowerPoint

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Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Welcome to the Purdue Online Writing Lab

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University houses writing resources and instructional material, and we provide these as a free service of the Writing Lab at Purdue. Students, members of the community, and users worldwide will find information to assist with many writing projects. Teachers and trainers may use this material for in-class and out-of-class instruction.

The Purdue On-Campus Writing Lab and Purdue Online Writing Lab assist clients in their development as writers—no matter what their skill level—with on-campus consultations, online participation, and community engagement. The Purdue Writing Lab serves the Purdue, West Lafayette, campus and coordinates with local literacy initiatives. The Purdue OWL offers global support through online reference materials and services.

A Message From the Assistant Director of Content Development 

The Purdue OWL® is committed to supporting  students, instructors, and writers by offering a wide range of resources that are developed and revised with them in mind. To do this, the OWL team is always exploring possibilties for a better design, allowing accessibility and user experience to guide our process. As the OWL undergoes some changes, we welcome your feedback and suggestions by email at any time.

Please don't hesitate to contact us via our contact page  if you have any questions or comments.

All the best,

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Students Online Learning PPT Diagram

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