Building Compelling Slide Decks and ReportsCornell Course

When communicating your ideas or significant data through PowerPoint, it is essential that your presentation clearly articulates your points. PowerPoint templates can be visually distracting and obscure valuable insights when used incorrectly. Creating your own template allows you to customize a presentation that specifically targets your audience and embodies visual integrity.

Reading reports are a summary of the most valuable points of your PowerPoint presentation that you can send out to key stakeholders after a presentation or in place of a presentation. Using PowerPoint slides to develop a report allows you to easily manipulate images or content to create a visually appealing summary of your presentation for key decision-makers.

In this course, you will discover the visual design principles and content guidelines necessary to curate a professional PowerPoint presentation or reading report. This will first involve developing your own PowerPoint template using the visual standards that specifically target your audience. You will have the opportunity to develop two supporting PowerPoint slides with appropriate message titles and visual evidence such as charts, graphs, photographs, or artistic elements. You will explore the structural components used in PowerPoint presentations to create a sound structure that guides your audience through your points seamlessly. Finally, you will convert two existing PowerPoint slides into a compelling and professional one-page report.

Students will require access to Microsoft PowerPoint in order to successfully complete this course.