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Volume 10, Number 1: October 29, 2003

Putting PowerPoint Slides on Your Course Website

 

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Want to put your PowerPoint slides on the Internet? There are a host of applications now available that convert PowerPoint into a web accessible format. Which one should you choose?

A team from UW-Madison's Division of Information Technology (DoIT) recently reviewed ten popular PowerPoint conversion programs, all with a pricetag of $700 or less. In the end, says DoIT's Kathy Konicek, the team could not recommend a single product, because each product differs substantially from its competitors. Instead, they published their findings on a website, From PowerPoint to the Web, for interested faculty and administrators to peruse. Instructors need first to decide how they want students to use their PowerPoint slides, Konicek says, and then determine which product might best meet their particular needs.

For example, some instructors might simply want to post their PowerPoint slides to their course website prior to the class meeting. That way, students can print them out to use as a notetaking guide during lecture or for review later on. In these cases, a non-narrative program such as DocuShare or Adobe PDF will probably suffice. Some considerations for non-narrative products include ease of use, text and graphics quality, and file size.

Other instructors may be shopping for a narrative product, one that allows them to add animation, movie clips, and/or voice-overs. Many of these products also feature interactivity so that students can view the slides at their own pace, repeating sections as often as they want. Done well, this kind of multimedia presentation not only teaches to different learning styles, it can also free up lecture time for more interactive classroom experiences.

At the DoIT website, users will find a synopsis for each of the ten products reviewed, including quick summaries of positive and negative features. There are also a number of links to sample presentations to demonstrate the look and feel of the product. Ratings charts show how each product measured up, based on criteria such as accessibility, cost, online help, learner interface, and others.

The project was made possible in part by a grant from UW System.

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