Creating Tutorials with PowerPoint: A Beginner’s Guide

Developing tutorials may be quite overwhelming if you are new in the presentation software world. Nevertheless, PowerPoint is one of the easiest tools to navigate in order to create vivid and informative tutorials. Well, let’s discuss how using PowerPoint is helpful to make tutorials that could engage your audience.

Introduction

Why Should PowerPoint be Used for Tutorials?

Some of you may be asking yourself as to why PowerPoint is the most preferred presentation when developing the tutorials. Firstly, it’s free, available for almost every OS, and contains numerous tools that will assist in creating gorgeous presentations. Also, it gives you the ability to integrate the use of text, images, videos and animations in the workflow. If you are a teacher, or a trainer or simply someone who has something to teach, this is your palette; your palette is PowerPoint.

Practical PowerPoint: Step One

However, there is a caveat: don’t rush into creating content before preparing your PowerPoint properly.

Setting Up Your PowerPoint

It is rather scary when one starts the project on a clean paper or computer screen. This is how it begins!

Choosing the Right Template

Every time you start working in PowerPoint, you will be given a wonderful choice of different templates. There should of course be more to it than choosing the first link that strikes your fancy. In its preparation, select a template that is in line with the theme of the tutorial. Is it professionals, more academic, or games? Just to warn you, if you chose a modish, flashy template to draw the audience in, it should be matched with your content.

Getting Acquanted with the GUI

While it is now time to start creating, first spend a few minutes getting to know your PowerPoint environment. If you are going to use later such elements as the slide layouts, text boxes, or multimedia, it is better to know its location. It’s like realising the setup of a new house- it is always easier to deal with once you understand where everything is parking lot.

In this chapter, we talk about how to plan out the content for your tutorial.

Now that we know how your PowerPoint will look like, the next thing you need is content.

Defining Your Objectives

Ask yourself: So what is it that you want your audience to either learn or rather understand concerning your line of business? This will help you establish a clear perspective and in the process keep your tutorial pertinent to its intended purpose. For instance, if your content is a tutorial where people want to learn how to bake cake, then your goal will be quite simple and that is to make people go from mixing batter to getting out a nicely baked cake out of the oven.

Structuring Your Presentation

Now you understand your goals and it is time to organize your content.

Creating an Outline

Outlining is crucial. When writing your outline, first scratch down the all the main headline subjects that you want to include. A bare-bones structure serves as a useful guide to structure your thinking and makes it possible not to miss a single important aspect. This one is sort of like a blueprint for your tutorial experience – a document that would help orient you to the way things work in your tutorials.

Deciding on Key Points

With your outline in hand, check what are the points that will be elaborated for each section. These are the details that will actually make your tutorial come alive. Try and use bullet points so that it does not get very wordy and thus off-track. Okay, it is always important to understand that when it comes to transmitting information, sometimes it is better to say a little than to say a lot!

Designing Your Slides

Here’s the exciting part—creating your slides!

This brought us to the final and probably the most important decision that is selecting the right colour scheme.

Light is a major factor in your presentation and specifically colors play a very important role. Choose the colors that relate to the topic of your infographic and keep balanced at the same time. For example, if you’re designing a tutorial for nature, you would probably not use bright reds and blues as they are exceedingly vivid. Do not choose bright colors that draw attention away from the content because that is what your audience needs to see.

How Fonts Can Be Employed Effectively

To some extent, one of the most important elements in presentation design is choosing the right font. It is better to select an easily readable font for the text of the poster. It is advisable by most experts to limit font changes to not more than two for your entire presentation, say, one for headings and the second for the main text. This way there will not be a lot of mixing and it will be easier to keep the house clean and looking good.

Balancing Text and Images

Did you ever hear the saying “The pictures are worth more than a thousand words”? Rather than patronizing your work with a seeming plethora of pictures that seem to dominate your writing over your images, learn to use them as enhancements to what you write. Make sure that your content is evenly split across your presentation since having too many elements on the screen can distract from the main points. Therefore, the objective is to make a contribution to the level of comprehension and not noise it up.

Introducing Multimedia Components

If you would like to go a step further? Insert a video or an audio clip into your presentation. These elements can help you enliven the tutorial format and increase the interest of the audience. That is as long as they are related and useful to the content you are putting on the internet. When used in a tutorial too much multimedia can be more destructive and make a good tutorial session messy.

Engaging Your Audience

Once you have designed your slide how do you retain audiences participation?

In particular, the Demonstration, Animations and Transitions tool.

Here you can find different animations and transitions available in the PowerPoint that can make your presentation fun. But use it sparingly in order to emphasize some points or add transitions to separate sections. But don’t overdo them – more than a few eye-popping effects can be overwhelming and thus pull Focus from the message being passed.

Encouraging Interaction

If possible, you should involve your audience in one way or the other during your tutorial. To engage your viewers, try to ask questions from them, or perhaps, use polls or quizzes in your video. Just as we highlighted while discussing lectures, an interactive tutorial helps in learning while also being fun for everyone.

Once you have produced your tutorial you will most likely return to the beginning of the tutorial and give it a ‘once over’ to make sure that everything flows logically and that there are no major inconsistencies.

Before actually hitting on the “present” button, take a while and check your work.

Testing Your Presentation

It is especially advisable to rehearse the demonstration several times. Look for spelling mistake, transition issues and the timing of the presentation. Always maintain a continuity. It is like when getting ready for a concert, you don’t want to look anything less than perfect.

Gathering Feedback

If you are able, you should ask a friend or a colleague to go through some tutorial that reached out to you. Getting another opinion is always helpful, and sometimes they will pick up on things that you did not notice. But mainly, they can tell you how engaging your tutorial is from the viewers’ side of things.

Conclusion

In general, it is more or less easy to create tutorials with PowerPoint. If you’ve followed these simple steps to preparing your presentation material, choosing what content to present, creating visually compelling slides, and engaging with your audience, you can design tutorials that not only teach, but also entertain. So feel free to roast, and start cooking those tutorials up!

FAQs

What is the most suitable PowerPoint for tutorials?
Any PowerPoint of the last few years should be fine, but PowerPoint 2016 or newer is recommended for its additional features and ease of use.

Am I able to make tutorials even if I’m not an expert?
Absolutely! With some practice and mentoring, anyone can make good tutorials using PowerPoint.

What is the length of time of a tutorial?
Ideally should take 15 to 30 minutes of the total time available for a lesson. This length is usually thrilling enough to develop your topic to the point without boring your audience.

Can I have some few tips on presenting my tutorial?
Practice makes perfect! Run through your presentation several times, look at your audience members when addressing them, and don’t be afraid to interact with them.

Am I allowed to use power point while creating on line tutorials?
Yes, these can be easily turned into videos or even just slide shows accessible through Zoom (or anything) so it is great for virtual lessons!