Chapter 1. Creating e-Learning with PowerPoint

There's an old urban myth that humans use only 2 percent of their brains. While that's never been substantiated, the idea does seem to bear out in regard to PowerPoint: most users employ just a fraction of PowerPoint's capabilities. Those of us in training know that an awful lot of classroom PowerPoint shows are just mind-numbing screen after screen of bulleted text. Adventuresome trainers may add some decorative elements like spinning slide transitions, pretty clip art, or animated text. In its worst application, poorly designed PowerPoint shows are uploaded to the web and called "e-learning." But they aren't "e-learning" programs. They are e-presentations or e-lectures or e-reading, but there's no learning there anywhere. Likewise, those who think PowerPoint can't be used to create good e-learning programs have likely only seen PowerPoint at its worst: slide after slide of bulleted lists, dizzying irrelevant animation, and decorative rather than meaningful graphics. (For that matter, many e-learning programs, regardless of the authoring tool used, suffer from the same problems. Search www.Google.com for a common topic like "online safety training" and see what you get.)

"In user testing, Microsoft found that nine out of every ten features that customers wanted to see added to Office products were already in the program."

—Ina Fried, www.CNETnews.com, September 2005