28 Preparing lecture slides

What’s your procedure for preparing lecture slides?

EG: A few weeks into the term, I landed on a PowerPoint template/design that I liked and that was flexible enough for most content, so I used that on repeat and switched out the basic design elements (colour, title slide images) each lecture. To add visual interest with little time commitment, I make frequent use of icons. I source them from PowerPoint directly, or through the Noun Project.

I tend to default to complete sentences and quotes with bolded keywords, rather than brief bullet points. I always share my slides, and know that students are going to use them as a study resource (or, despite my best efforts, as a lecture stand in). This is crucial for accessibility and a flexible learning environment for all students, but it can feed into the notion that possession = knowledge. So, I try to have my slides offer complete and clear foundational ideas that transition into (open-ended) questions that invite further engagement. Consequently, though, my slides do tend to be text heavy. One strategy to ameliorate this, which I use a lot, is to reveal my text one sentence at a time.