Making Effective PowerPoint Presentations

This article discusses the most common mistakes people make when creating PowerPoint presentations. Most people create presentations in a linear pattern with a heading and information following it. Since people are used to this common linear pattern they lose interest quickly. The important thing is to switch the order of information or switch presenters between presentations so that people become more engaged. Another problem is that people include too much information in their slides from written sources such as text books. Instead of just reading slides out to the audience, a better idea is to summarize key points in slides and then discuss them to the audience. The natural reaction for someone while doing a presentation is to just verbally share everything they know about the topic. This loses people's interest quickly so the idea is to spend between 30 seconds to a minute on each slide. The presenter should dicuss information or provide examples to make it easier for the audience to understand. Other problems are the structure of the article. Each article should develop a point
from material presented before it and lead to information coming next. The presenter should interact with the audience. Try leaving out important information till the audience asks for it to keep the questions on subject. These tips will help make your presentations more effective.