Fixer Upper: Renovating Your Instructional Design Process
Why Renovate Your Instructional Design Process?
Small changes can make a house into a home. Similarly, small enhancements to your classroom materials can create an inviting space for students to enjoy learning. Explore research-based tips for renovating your instructional design process to create a more engaging and purposeful experience for your students. Whether you are updating your in-class PowerPoint or refurbishing your D2L course content, remember to look at elements of design including: color, text, layouts, images, sound quality and scripts. Examine areas of your instructional design that may need a little fixing up!
Sample: Before/After Slide Renovation
Example Video
In our live workshop, we showed the following video to highlight some changes that we are recommending. Note the custom template, attractive color palette, engaging and meaning images, effective text positioning, and understandable script and audio.
Text Tips
- Remove the superflous
- Minimize bullets - use alternatives
- Style text - draw the eye
- Text placement - attention/focus
- Limit animations (only important points)
- Slides: 1 concept per slide / supporting the presentation goal
Color Tips
- Sparingly - draw the eye
- Use with purpose
- Use Microsoft PowerPoint eyedropper - color selecting/matching
- Choose a color palette:
- Warm/cool colors
- How to use color
- Consider people who perceive color differently or cannot see colors
Template Tips
- Resource: SlideCarnival - Variety in Ppt templates
- Look within the template slides for usage/help info
- Changing colors, background, font, etc.
- Icons and shapes
- Layout options
- Look within the template slides for usage/help info
Image Tips
- Picture superiority
- Images - more likely remembered than words
- Complex ideas conveyed easily in a single image
- Rule of thirds
- Remember alt text for any images
- You can use the Accessibility Checker built into PowerPoint to help you find missing alt text
- Resources
- Quality images: Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash, Google - advanced search/ free to share & modify
- Cutout characters: eLearning Brothers free asset library
- Copyright considerations
- Animations/Transitions - keep it simple, should add value
Making the Most of the PowerPoint Notes Pane
- Value of the Notes Pane: F2F or video
- Using the Notes Pane in presentation mode
- If your goal is to create a video from your presentation, you probably have an outline of the script already created if you've used the Notes Pane in your presentation. For each slide, imagine that you are sitting with a student and trying to explain the essentials through dialog. Type out your side of the dialog into the Notes Pane, using your previous talking points as a starting place. Once you have explained the essentials for each slide, think about how your slideshow might fit a story arc. Telling a story in a video isn't a necessity, but you do want to include something that helps the viewer remember the information. Rattling off facts is not effective. Again, think about how you would convey the essential information to someone across the table. That's how you want to come across in the video.
Audio Production Tips
- Recording location - quiet
- Microphone placement
- Watch audio levels - think green!
- Microphone recommendations:
- Audacity is a free audio recording program for Mac, PC and Linux
Video Producation Tips - Camtasia/PowerPoint
- Creating PPT slideshow recording
- Synchronizing audio in Camtasia
- Syncing captions from text dump
Video Publishing/Delivery Sites
- YouTube (most popular - unlisted)
- Research continues: campus-wide video-hosting solution
Research and Articles
Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning
Does teaching with PowerPoint increase students' learning? A meta-analysis
Picture superiority effect in recognition memory
Humor break: Life After Death in PowerPoint
Vanderbilt University - Making better powerpoint presentations
Understanding and Using PowerPoint
Empowering Powerpoint: Slides and Teaching Effectiveness, Brock and Joglekar
