Powerful PowerPoint for Educators: Using Visual Basic for Applications to Make PowerPoint Interactive

Pro ject Or ga ni za tion
As part of the de sign pro cess, you must think about how your pro ject will
be or ganized. Chap ter 2 describes how to create hyperlinks in PowerPoint, and
Chapter 6 describes how to use VBA to move from any slide to any other. How -
ever, just be cause you can make links from any slide to any other doesn’t mean
that you want to. A pro ject with a clear or ganization will help your stu dents find
their way around the project.
There are sev eral ways to organize a project. The sim plest organization is
linear, in which the user goes from one slide to the next to the next to the next
(see Fig ure 1.1). This works very well for projects in which knowledge is be ing
built from prerequisite knowl edge or in which spe cific steps are followed in a
specific order.
Fig ure 1.1. Lin ear Or ga ni za tion
However, many pro jects don’t re quire a lin ear or ganization and would ben -
efit from some other or ganization. Fortunately, hypermedia allows us to link any 
slide to any slide that we want. We could fol low a menu organization (see Figure
1.2, page 6). This or ganization allows the user to study the topics in whatever or -
der he or she wants and even allows the user to skip topics.
Some topics lend them selves better to a hi erarchical menu struc ture in
which each subtopic has its own menu. Other pro jects might do better with a
completely hyperlinked or ganization in which any slide can lead to any other
slide.
The or ganization you choose should match the ob jectives of the project. If
it is not ap propriate for students to skip sections, don’t al low it. You pro vide
links where you want your stu dents to go (and in Chap ter 2, you’ll learn about
Kiosk mode so you can make sure they only go where you want).
There are many po tential structural or ganizations, but it is help ful to pick
something that will al low the user to nav igate easily through your in formation. If
the structure is not easy to nav igate, when a user goes through your presentation,
it is easy to get lost in hyperspace.
Pro ject Or ga ni za tion 5

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