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Tutorial: How To Create Interactive Powerpoint Presentations And E-Learning Courses?

Fig. 1-1 Use PowerPoint to create powerful interactive presentations and e-learning courses

PowerPoint isn’t just about bullet-point slides. With PowerPoint you can create effective interactive presentations and e-learning courses. Leverage the versatile features of PowerPoint like hyperlinks and master slides to create powerful presentations / e-learning courses. I created a sample e-learning course in PowerPoint, for this tutorial, as shown in Fig. 1-1.

What is interactivity? At the basic level, it means giving control to the user to choose what topics he / she want to review. You can apply this concept of interactivity for your PowerPoint presentations and e-learning courses.

Consider, for example, an introductory e-learning course on Internet. Let’s assume there are five topics in the course and a glossary.

Using PowerPoint, you can design either a linear or an interactive course. If you take the latter route, you allow the user to navigate the course in a non-linear mode. That is, the user has the freedom to review any topic and in any sequence. A user, for example, can first checkout the glossary, next the first topic and so on.

Let’s build a simple interactive e-learning course as shown in Fig. 1-1. You can use the same steps to build an interactive presentation also.

Step-by-Step Tutorial to Create an Interactive PowerPoint Presentation / E-Learning Course

Create content that’s common to most / all of the slides on one or more master slide(s). To learn more about master slides and their benefits, review Why and How to Use Master Slides in PowerPoint?

Download a free PowerPoint business presentation template for interactive multimedia presentations and business e-learning courses.

STEP 1: Start PowerPoint. Click View > Master > Slide Master (Fig. 1-2) to create a master slide. On this slide, create content like the titles, main menu, and navigation buttons.

Fig. 1-2 Click View > Master > Slide Master to insert a master slide

For this tutorial, I have created the gradient background patch for the menus, the e-learning course title and five menus on a master slide (Fig. 1-3).

Fig. 1-3 Content on the master slide: Gradient background patch, e-learning course title and five menus

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STEP 2: Click View > Normal to return to the normal view.

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STEP 3: Click Ctrl+M or click Insert > New Slide to insert a normal slide in the slide pane. On it, create the content for your first topic / menu (Fig. 3-1). Repeat these steps for each of your topics.

Fig. 3-1 Create content on normal slide for each topic

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STEP 4: Link the menus to their respective topics: Click View > Master > Slide Master. Right-click the first topic / menu. The context-sensitive menu displays (Fig. 4-1).

Fig. 4-1 Right-click on a menu in the master slide to link the menu to its content

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STEP 5: Click Hyperlink in the above context-sensitive menu. The Insert Hyperlink dialog displays (Fig. 5-1).

Fig. 5-1 The Insert Hyperlink dialog

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STEP 6: In the Link to: frame in the above dialog, click Place in This Document.

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STEP 7: In the Select a place in this document frame, click the relevant slide, in the Slide Titles, you want the topic / menu to link to (Fig. 7-1).

Fig. 7-1 Click a slide in the Slide Titles to link the menu to it

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STEP 8: Click OK.

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STEP 9: Repeat STEPS 4-8 for the other menus on your master slide.

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Navigation for PowerPoint Interactive Presentations and E-Learning Courses

The left- and right-arrow keys in PowerPoint in the View Show, by default, help the user to move backward or forward through the slides.

If you wish you can use your own navigation buttons and hyperlink it to the relevant slides.

Tutorial: How To Create Navigation Buttons And Links In Powerpoint? has the step-by-step illustration with screen shots to create navigation buttons and links.

A glossary is an integral part of many interactive PowerPoint presentations and e-learning courses. Tutorial: How to Create a Glossary in PowerPoint? illustrates the steps to create a glossary.

Powerpoint Tutorial: How to Create Great Buttons / Icons For Presentations And E-Learning Courses in Powerpoint? features steps to create professional quality buttons / icons.

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Written by S Viswakumar
Professional Content Writer and E-Learning Developer