Enhance Presentations

Help Center → Enhance Presentations

While video displays with colorful slides are no substitute for a dynamic, engaging lecture, presentation tools can help you quickly create, edit, archive, and disseminate presentations. With the proper classroom setup you can incorporate high resolution images, sounds, or video, and link your presentation to materials on the Web.

Common Goals

Create presentations that you can easily adapt for different purposes and venues.
Add effective visual or audio elements to presentations.
Make course materials accessible through the Web.
Create handouts and other supplemental materials.
Reinforce course or lecture content through repeated exposure.
Focus student attention on course content rather than note-taking.

Options

Options for enhancing presentations are suggested below.

Multimedia Through a Web Site

Posting your presentation on your Web Site allows students to review important course concepts on their own. You can integrate sounds, images and simulations to your presentation and provide your students with different perspectives to course concepts. There are numerous ways to go about creating a Web Site. The Catalyst Web Site offers step-by-step instructions for using a variety of Web page editors.
Planning Considerations

Visual Learning

Pictures can convey ideas more easily than verbal descriptions, and students today are increasingly visual learners. You can illustrate your course content with diagrams, photos, maps, or a variety of other visual resources. You can find thousands of pictures by accessing the image collections of the UW Libraries. By posting visual resources on your course Web site you allow your students to access them 24 hours a day, so they can review them at their convenience.
Planning Considerations

Auditory Learning

Using sounds in your lectures can also enhance your students' learning. You might want your students to listen to native speakers of a foreign language, for example. By posting your sound files on the Web, your students will have easy access to this material.

MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching)

MERLOT is an online educational portal that contains links to thousands of online learning materials created by college faculty in all subject areas. All material is peer-reviewed. You can easily find the material you need to enhance your multimedia presentations.

Campus Resources

Catalyst Workshops - Catalyst offers workshops to help you use the tools and technologies you need to enhance your presentations. Participation in Catalyst workshops is free for all UW instructors, employees, and students. Advance registration is required for some workshops.
Center for Instructional Development and Research (CIDR) - CIDR offers a variety of resources and services designed to promote effective teaching and learning. The center is open to all UW faculty and teaching assistants.
Center for Advanced Research Technology in the Arts and Humanities (CARTAH) - CARTAH serves as a bridge between the research community and the University's seventeen Arts and Humanities departments by providing computing and media resources.
Center for Social Science Computation and Research (CSSCR) - CSSCR is a computer resource center that provides facilities and support for social science departments at the University of Washington. Their facilities are available to all UW students, faculty, and staff.