Slides can be a great format for OER. These can be lecture slides developed for use with an open textbook or slides that contain all the content that students need on a topic (such as the OER grant project Corporate Insolvency Law in Australia). Slides are easily reused and can encourage others to use open resources.
A key feature of slide sets is their modularity. Slides can be seen as building blocks that can be combined with one another on three levels:
The remixing that is typical of OER is part of the nature of working with slides. It is common and very easy to pull different slides together for a new set of slides and to put different elements together for a new individual slide. This high level of combinability also means a high level of separability. Individual slides or individual elements can be removed or replaced as desired.
As with other formats of OER, consider the purpose of your resource and how it may be used before structuring your slides accordingly. When developing slides consider:
Adapted from The gold standard for perhaps the most underrated format: presentation slides as OER by Jöran Muuß-Merholz and Team OERinfo CC BY 4.0 Licence
Like all OER, slides should be created using programs and services whose use does not present any additional hurdles. Free software and open file formats are usually used as criteria for this. Slides reveal a weakness in these definitions. Proprietary software (e.g. PowerPoint) and semi-open file formats (e.g. pptx files) are so well established here that alternative software (e.g. LibreOffice) and open formats (e.g. odp files) represent a higher hurdle for many users. Against this background, there is no one ideal tool for creating slides. The following table evaluates different programs and associated file formats for creating and editing slide sets, each with its own advantages and disadvantages in terms of openness.
| Software (File type) | Advantages in terms of openness | Disadvantages in terms of openness |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Office (.pptx) |
|
|
| LibreOffice (.odp) |
|
|
| Google Slides |
|
|
Adapted from The gold standard for perhaps the most underrated format: presentation slides as OER by Jöran Muuß-Merholz and Team OERinfo CC BY 4.0 Licence
Work through the below H5P to discover more about accessibility in PowerPoint.
The Accessibility Checker is available in both PowerPoint Online and on Desktop. To access all features, open your presentation on your desktop or laptop computer. To ensure that your presentation can be read by a diverse range of people, you should run the Accessibility Checker. This inspects your presentation for elements that would potentially cause problems for accessibility tools such as a screen reader. Errors, warnings and tips are displayed in the inspection results, along with information as to why and how to fix the issue. Whilst the Accessibility Checker is a really useful tool, it does not currently check all accessibility issues that are covered by the WCAG 2.1 AA standards.
Depending on the version of Office you are using, the Accessibility Checkers can be accessed either from the Review tab or the File tab.
Adapted from Create accessible PowerPoint presentations by Kirsten Thompson and Jane Hetherington CC BY-NC 4.0