Microsoft PoerPoint is available to U of T instructors through Microsoft 365. You can use PowerPoint online or install the desktop and mobile apps. Visit the U of T Microsoft 365 for Faculty & Staff page for eligibility, access, and technical information.
Beyond creating lecture slides, PowerPoint can support visual explanations, active learning, collaborative activities, student presentations, and the development of accessible learning materials. Instructors can also use PowerPoint to record narrated presentations and display live captions during classes.
Design Slides for Their Learning Purpose
The design of a PowerPoint presentation should reflect how it will be used and what students need to learn. Slides accompanying a live lecture may serve a different purpose from slides intended for independent study or exam preparation.
Consider the purpose of your slides:
- Live lectures and presentations: Highlight key ideas, visual explanations, examples, and prompts that complement spoken explanations.
- Study and exam review guides: Include definitions, worked examples, summaries, and detailed explanations that students can revisit independently.
- Independent learning materials: Provide sufficient context and guidance for students to understand the content without a live presenter.
- Discussion and active learning: Use questions, scenarios, images, and prompts to encourage students to interpret, discuss, and apply ideas.
- Recorded presentations: Design slides and narration to work together, including explanations of important visual content.
The amount of text on a slide should reflect its purpose. Slides used during a live lecture may benefit from concise text that complements spoken explanations, while slides intended as study guides or independent learning materials may require more detailed information.
When designing slides, consider how text, images, diagrams, and other elements contribute to understanding. Avoid adding visual elements solely for decoration, and organize information so students can identify important relationships and ideas.
Support Active Learning and Understanding
PowerPoint can support more than presenting information. Instructors can use slides to guide explanations, scaffold learning activities, encourage participation, and respond to students’ developing understanding.
Visual Explanations and Progressive Disclosure
Images, diagrams, annotations, and animations can help instructors explain concepts and make relationships visible.
PowerPoint can support activities such as:
- Visual analysis: Use images, shapes, and annotations to identify features, compare examples, or examine relationships.
- Worked examples: Demonstrate a process or problem-solving approach before asking students to apply it independently.
- Progressive disclosure: Reveal information in stages to focus attention on particular elements or steps.
- Comparisons: Place examples, diagrams, or perspectives alongside one another to support analysis.
- Concept development: Build diagrams, models, or explanations progressively during a lecture.
Animations can be useful when they support a clear learning purpose. Avoid unnecessary movement or effects that may distract students or create accessibility barriers.
PowerPoint’s Zoom feature allows instructors to navigate between slides or sections nonlinearly. For example, an instructor might create an overview slide and move to different topics based on student questions or the direction of a discussion.
When using Zoom, consider whether the animated transitions are necessary. You can disable the Zoom transition to reduce unnecessary movement, and provide clear navigation cues so students can follow changes in topic. For detailed instructions, consult Microsoft’s Use Zoom for PowerPoint to bring your presentation to life.
Classroom Activities and Scaffolding
Slides can provide structure for learning activities by presenting instructions, guiding questions, examples, and opportunities for reflection.
PowerPoint can support activities such as:
- Think-pair-share: Display a question and guide students through individual reflection, discussion with a partner, and whole-class sharing.
- Case studies: Present scenarios and supporting information for students to analyze and discuss.
- Predictions: Ask students to anticipate an outcome before revealing additional information.
- Guided practice: Present partially completed examples or diagrams that students can work through.
- Reflection: Provide prompts for students to summarize learning, identify questions, or consider how their understanding has changed.
- Group activities: Display instructions, time limits, and guiding questions to support collaborative work.
Instructors can also use PowerPoint’s drawing tools to highlight information, work through examples, or respond to questions during a presentation.
Engaging Students with Microsoft Forms
Microsoft Forms can be integrated into PowerPoint to collect student responses during presentations. Instructors can use the Forms add-in to insert polls, quizzes, or other questions directly into slides.
This can support activities such as:
- Check understanding: Ask a question to identify concepts that may need further explanation.
- Gather predictions: Collect students’ initial responses before demonstrating a process or revealing an outcome.
- Prompt discussion: Display response patterns and invite students to explain or compare their reasoning.
- Collect feedback: Ask students to identify areas of confusion or suggest topics for further review.
- Support reflection: Invite students to respond to a question at the beginning or end of class.
To insert a Form:
- Open your presentation in PowerPoint and select the slide where you want to insert the Form.
- Access Microsoft Forms:
- PowerPoint desktop (Windows): Select Insert > Forms.
- PowerPoint for the web: Select Home > Add-ins > Forms. If the add-in is not installed, search for Forms and select Add.
- Create a new Form or insert an existing one.
- Select the appropriate presentation or response-collection option, where available.
- Invite students to respond using the available participation link or QR code.
Instructors can review responses in Microsoft Forms and use the results to guide subsequent explanations or activities. The display of responses within PowerPoint may vary depending on the integration and presentation mode.
For detailed instructions, consult Microsoft’s Insert a form or quiz into PowerPoint.
Collaborate on Presentations
PowerPoint allows multiple people to work on the same presentation when it is stored in Microsoft OneDrive or SharePoint. Instructors and students can contribute to slides, provide comments, and revise shared content.
Collaborative presentations can support activities such as:
- Group presentations: Develop and deliver presentations based on research, case studies, or course projects.
- Collaborative analysis: Ask groups to contribute interpretations, examples, or evidence to shared slides.
- Visual explanations: Create diagrams, concept maps, or other representations of course concepts.
- Collective resources: Build shared study guides, glossaries, or collections of examples.
- Peer feedback: Use comments to provide suggestions and questions on another group’s presentation.
- Multi-stage projects: Develop presentations over time as students revise their ideas and incorporate feedback.
Presentations stored in OneDrive can be shared with specific people, and permissions can control whether collaborators can view or edit the file.
When using shared presentations, establish clear expectations for contributions, editing, and feedback. Consider whether students should work in separate slides or sections to reduce confusion and support group coordination.
For detailed instructions, consult Microsoft’s Work together on PowerPoint presentations.
Present, Record, and Share Slides
PowerPoint provides several features for delivering presentations, creating recordings, and making materials available to students.
Presenter View and Presentation Tools
Presenter View allows instructors to see speaker notes, upcoming slides, and presentation controls while students see the presentation.
Speaker notes can contain additional explanations, examples, reminders, or questions that support delivery without placing all the information on the slide itself.
Instructors can also use:
- Live annotation: Draw, highlight, or mark up slides during a presentation.
- Slide navigation: Move between slides or sections to respond to student questions and discussion.
- PowerPoint Zoom: Navigate nonlinearly between selected slides or sections.
- Cameo: Insert a live camera feed directly into a slide, allowing the presenter to appear alongside presentation content.
Cameo may be useful for recorded explanations or presentations where seeing the instructor alongside visual content supports the learning experience.
The availability of Presenter View and other presentation tools varies by PowerPoint version and device.
For detailed instructions, consult Microsoft’s Choose the right view for the task in PowerPoint and Presenting with Cameo.
Live Captions and Subtitles
PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 can display automatic captions or subtitles while an instructor presents slides.
This can support accessibility during in-person, online, and hybrid classes. Instructors can select the spoken language, subtitle language, and caption placement, including positioning captions above or below the slides.
Automatic captions depend on audio quality and may not accurately capture technical terminology or overlapping speech. They also do not automatically create a transcript or provide captions for a subsequent recording.
For instructions and guidance on selecting appropriate captioning approaches, consult CTSI’s Live Captioning for Classes.
Recording Presentations
PowerPoint allows instructors to record narrated presentations, including audio, slide timings, annotations, and video where supported. Presentations can then be exported as video files for students to access asynchronously.
Recorded presentations can be useful for:
- Explaining complex concepts or worked examples.
- Providing assignment instructions or demonstrations.
- Preparing students for classroom activities.
- Creating short instructional materials that students can revisit.
- Supplementing lectures with additional explanations.
Before sharing a recording, review its content and accessibility. Recorded videos should include accurate captions, and instructors should consider how the recording will be hosted and shared.
For detailed technical instructions, consult Microsoft’s Record your presentation.
For broader teaching considerations, including copyright, privacy, accessibility, and sharing, consult CTSI’s Recording Lectures and Classes.
Sharing Slides with Students
Instructors can share PowerPoint presentations before or after class to support preparation, note-taking, review, and independent learning.
Consider how students will use the materials:
- Before class: Share slides or outlines to help students prepare, organize notes, or identify key concepts.
- After class: Provide slides with additional explanations, annotations, or references to support review.
- For independent study: Include sufficient context for students to understand the materials without the instructor’s narration.
- For collaborative activities: Share editable presentations with appropriate permissions.
PowerPoint files can be shared through Microsoft OneDrive or made available through Quercus. Instructors can also export presentations as PDFs when appropriate.
The format should reflect how students need to use the materials. Editable PowerPoint files, PDFs, and recorded presentations offer different possibilities for access and interaction. Review the accessibility of whichever format you provide.
Create Accessible Slides
PowerPoint includes features that can help instructors create accessible and well-structured presentations. Accessibility is important both when slides are displayed during class and when students access them independently.
When creating PowerPoint presentations:
- Use built-in slide layouts: Choose layouts with appropriate placeholders to support consistent structure and accessible reading order.
- Provide meaningful slide titles: Use descriptive, unique titles that help students identify content and navigate the presentation.
- Check reading order: Ensure that text, images, and other elements are read in a logical sequence by assistive technologies.
- Add alternative text: Describe informative images, diagrams, and charts, and mark decorative elements appropriately.
- Use readable text and sufficient contrast: Consider font size, spacing, colour contrast, and visibility in different teaching environments.
- Avoid relying on colour alone: Use labels, patterns, or other indicators to communicate distinctions.
- Use animations intentionally: Ensure that movement and progressive disclosure support understanding rather than create unnecessary barriers.
- Provide accessible media: Ensure that videos and audio recordings include appropriate captions, transcripts, or other alternatives.
- Check your presentation: Use Microsoft Accessibility Checker to identify and address potential issues before sharing slides.
PowerPoint’s Reading Order pane allows instructors to review and adjust the order in which slide elements are interpreted by screen readers. This is particularly important when creating custom layouts or rearranging objects.
For detailed instructions, consult Microsoft’s Make your PowerPoint presentations accessible to people with disabilities and Make slides easier to read by using the Reading Order pane.
Accessibility Checker can identify many potential barriers, but it cannot determine whether a presentation is fully accessible, inclusive, or usable. Review your slides from the perspective of students who may access them using different technologies, devices, or approaches.
For more guidance, consult CTSI’s Microsoft Accessibility Checker and UDL Express: SLIDE into Accessibility Resources.