There was a time when people watched live television programming. People used to watch most non-regular programs not knowing when the program would end. Modern music and video players let us know how much of the media we’re watching\listening to is left. The expectation is same when it comes to presentations. Here are some tips to help audiences know the progress of a presentation.
Speaker Reminds The Audience
The presenter can simply remind the audience about the amount of time left. You don’t really need to put it in your slides per say. You can choose to implicitly tell the audience about how much time is remaining. This can be done by telling them that for example, “This presentation is in three parts”. Then later you can tell them, “This is the last portion of the presentation..” etc.
Add A Progress Bar Using This PowerPoint Feature
Show a progress bar on the bottom of the slides. This will make your presentation feel like a video and it will help everyone know where they are in the presentation. One way to add this progress bar is to use the Macro feature in PowerPoint. It uses a bit of code though. Click here to learn more.
Video Player Progress Bar
A much easier way to get a “video player progress bar” is to save the presentation as a video and then play the video using a video player. Pause and Play the video to advance the slides. This can be used to show your video player’s progress bar on the bottom of the screen. Go to File and click Save As. Here you can choose different file formats, choose MP4 to save your presentation as a video.
Use Slide Numbers
A very simple and straightforward way is to use normal numbers on the bottom-right-corner of each slide. This is the least good idea because the tiny numbers can be very hard to read at times. Numbers might also distract the audience a bit.
Image: [Public Domain] via Wikimedia Commons
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