Best Practices for Microsoft Sway Presentations

What is Sway

Sway is a fully online presentation tool that is part of the Microsoft Office programs. With Microsoft Sway content is built in a linear fashion and the editor can select an overall theme and customize several options for the presentation style. Sway then selects the best format for the viewer based on the device they're using to access the presentation. 

When to use Sway

There are some instances where content provided for a course does not lend itself well to the format of a presentation. This may include text heavy lectures, lectures that contain many links, or content such as definitions that do not need accompanying narration. In these instances, using Sway may be a good alternative for presenting content to the students. Sway functions well to replicate an "in-class handout" for online courses.

Best Practices

Receiving Content from Faculty

Although there are a variety of ways to add and edit content in Sway, the easiest way to create a presentation from a content developer is to have the developer add the desired content to a Microsoft Word document. You can then start the Sway "from a document" and the content from the document will be imported directly into a new Sway presentation. Sway will recognize and preserve the formatting of the following styles:

• Title
• Heading 1
• Heading 2
• Body text
• Images

After importing the document you will need to review the presentation and make minor modifications as desired. 

Sharing Owner/Editor Privileges

Create a document within the course's development folder of Egnyte. This single document should contain the name of each of the presentations and an edit link that any individual from OCDE could use to edit the presentations if needed.

Settings

When editing the Sway, it is recommended that you select following settings:

Citations for images

Images used in the presentation should include a citation that contains the following:

1. Who created the image
2. The type of Creative Commons license the image holds (if applicable)
3. Where the image originated
4. A link to the website where the image was originally found. 

Note: Images cited within the presentation do not need to be included on the Course References document.