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Teaching Today - This Week's Tips Teaching Today - This Week's Tips

This Week's Topic

Lecture Overhead Design
Well-designed overheads will enhance lectures and help your students understand the material. This week we will help you take advantage of certain aspects of slide design to save time and improve the overall appearance of your overheads.

This Week's Tips

Color Presentations (Monday)
Color overheads can jazz up your lectures, particularly if you include graphic design elements. When integrating color into your design, use light-colored backgrounds for overheads and a dark background for on-screen presentations. Design and classroom-test one “master” color slide before formatting the rest of your slides. When using a textbook, ask the publisher about electronic overheads that you can customize.

Download your free Overhead Font Master today!

Selecting Presentation Software (Tuesday)
Using the right software to create overheads makes slide design and development fast and easy. Important software features worth considering include ease of use, the ability to import and export files to and from your word processing program, the ability to import and manipulate graphics (at least some functionality), the ability to link to the Internet, flexible color features, and compatibility with your computer and university classroom computers.

Selecting Fonts for Overhead Presentations (Wednesday)
Fonts (e.g., Times New Roman, Arial) often determine how easily students can read your overheads. When designing slides, consider these suggestions: Use font sizes larger than 15 points. For body text, use sans serif fonts like Arial and Helvetica. Serif fonts, like Times New Roman, are good for titles. For light backgrounds, use dark colors for text and bright colors only for emphasis. Allow enough white space to separate text and images.

Using Images and Graphics in Overheads (Thursday)
Images can help illustrate lecture concepts and enhance student comprehension. When using images, include an acknowledgment stating where the image came from. For overheads, when possible, use the .tif file format. For on-screen presentations, when possible, use the .jpg file format. If the colors of a graphic are essential to understanding the image, label each part with an appropriate color, so that black-and-white copies are understandable.

Presentation Technology (Friday)
There are several ways to present lecture materials. Your choice depends on available resources, your expertise with technology, available time to prepare, and the lecture itself. Here are three types of presentation technologies and their specific requirements: overhead projector—overheads and a screen; data projector (on-screen presentations)—a computer installed with the appropriate software, electronic overheads, and a screen; computer screen or TV monitor—a computer, the appropriate software, and electronic overheads.



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