Introduction
Are you struggling with your course slides being a mess? Do they all look different? Do they take forever to be made? In this lesson, we’re learning all about slide templates for your online courses. So that way you can go faster, and you can crank out courses even quicker. All your slides are going to look crazy professional, and you can reuse the content across your different slides.
In this lesson, we’re learning all about course slide templates. What are they? Why would you want to use them? How to use them, and how to set them up correctly.
Then we’re going to go over a real-life example of setting up course slides using templates. Then we’ll summarize all our best tips for creative business owners.
Challenges course creators may face when they don’t use slide templates to create course content:
- They may not save time
- They may not create content faster
- Students may find it hard to digest their course content
- They may not be able to reuse their training materials across all training platforms
- They may not be able to charge more for a professional look
What Is It?
These are themes or coloring books where you fill in the blanks. They are templates that, once created, you can copy and tweak as needed. You might have multiple templates for different purposes.
These slide templates provide standard layouts for your title and content slides in your course. Every time you need a new title slide, you can simply use your favorite template. No need to worry about adjusting pixels, colors, fonts, or line heights.
Your slides will maintain a consistent look, which is great not only for you and your business but also for your students.
Why Use It?
Why not just create slides from scratch every time you need them? You do not know exactly what the future holds, but in a way, you do. You know you will need title slides, content slides, bulleted lists, and picture slides. So why not prepare for that?
Title slides and templates make it easier for teachers to create content and for students to absorb it. Without a consistent format, students have to reorient themselves with each slide, wondering, Wait, what is going on here? One slide has three bullets, another has giant bullets, and yet another follows a hierarchy. This inconsistency can be distracting.
By using slide templates with a clear structure, students can focus on the content instead of trying to decode the layout. No more confusion about the message or its delivery. Slide templates are not just great for creative teachers, they are a game changer for students too.
How-to Guide
So let’s get into how to guide. First of all, what are the benefits of using templates?
Benefits of Templates
Saves Time
They save time. In content creation, you’re going to be creating a lot of content. You can crank out title slides, bullet slides, examples, pictures, and all these different kinds of slides.
You can create slides quickly without worrying about all the little details. Whether you have a golden master slide that you copy or you use built-in templates in Google Slides, PowerPoint, or Keynote, the process becomes much easier.
If you already use templates, great. But even if you do not, having a main slide with a consistent style and structure that you can quickly copy and update with a new title and content is a game changer. This approach allows you to create more polished, professional slide decks. When your content looks high-end rather than thrown together, you can charge more for your work.
Charge More for a Professional Look
You’re gonna have a more professional look, and therefore you can charge more. By using that high-end template, you got the shadows and spacing, you got it all just perfect. Over time, you keep making it better and better. That’s why it’s great to just keep revising your templates instead of just every time you’re creating a slide, just create a new one from scratch, you’re just not going to have the same look.
If you keep using your templates and you keep improving your templates, over time, your stuff’s going to be crazy good. You might think you can’t create every single template because you have a lot to do.
A Few Templates Make Most Slides
You would be surprised how much you can do with just a handful of templates. With a solid set of templates, you could create all sorts of great slides. In fact, 90 percent of your slides will likely be covered by these templates, with only the occasional need for something unique.
Maybe you need to add a flowchart or arrange a combination of three pictures, two vertical and one horizontal. In that case, you can start with one of your core templates and layer in the necessary elements while keeping your title, header, or footer consistent.
Once students get familiar with these templates, they will quickly adapt as they move through different lessons. When the next lesson follows the same slide structure, they will be able to focus entirely on the content, whether it is about design, making, fashion, performing, or any other subject.
Instead of wasting time deciphering the slide layout, students can concentrate on learning. Templates do not just make life easier for teachers, they are a huge benefit for students too
More Accessible – Colors, Font Sizes
In this complex world, using slide templates will make things more accessible. Over time, you will refine your choices, selecting the right colors, black and dark grays, font sizes, fonts, letter spacing, and other design elements. Even small details, like the shade of blue used for hyperlinks, matter. Do they blend into a gray background or do they stand out? Are they high contrast?
Think about making your courses more accessible, not just for traditional accessibility needs like color blindness but for everyone. This includes people who speak English as a second language and even neurotypical learners. Clarity, proper spacing, and avoiding overcrowding will make content easier to digest.
By using templates, you can refine your designs little by little. When you receive feedback, you can improve them for the future. This leads to continuous improvement, making your slides and courses better over time.
Reuse Content in Training Business
Finally, if you run a creative training business, templates allow you to reuse your content efficiently. Whether you are creating YouTube videos, online courses, webinars, or in person training sessions, templates help you repurpose your intellectual property across different formats.
Your creative training skills, whether in music, design, or any other subject, become more valuable when you have a collection of assets that can be copied, pasted, and reused across your various products and services.
Having a consistent standard ensures that all your content maintains your unique look and branding, which is great for business. It reinforces your identity, so after a learning session, students will know where to go to continue learning from you and your company.
By reusing, copying, pasting, and leveraging your training content across multiple distribution channels and services, templates will help streamline and grow your business.
Popular Template Layouts
So let’s go over a couple of different templates. You’re not gonna use one template for everything, there are different kinds of layers of templates. There might be a header or footer, but even the header and footer might not be there on a title slide.
Maybe a couple of your content slides have a common header and footer, but the middle is different. So let’s just talk about what are those common templates that you might want to have in your portfolio that you could just quickly jump to and grab whenever you’re banging out a course or any sort of training.
Title Slides
The first one is the course title slide, this is, what is it? This is like the hero image, it’s got a cool picture, possibly. It has a lot of big branding. Maybe you’re using slightly different fonts, a heavier font.
You have this title slide and once you use it, once you lay it out, once you figure it out, you can use it for lots of stuff.
Module Overview
Next is a module overview. So this could be a module slide. So again, a module is a group of lessons. So you have your course, and the course is broken up into, let’s just say, seven modules and every module has three to five lessons in it.
However you structure it, that’s fine. But the point is that, across your different courses, you’re going to probably introduce your modules. So that’s what we’re talking about here. It could just be the name of your module. Now it’s going to look different than your master title slide.
It could be almost like a commercial or a preamble to your lessons. Some people take their module slides and list out their lessons or some people just use a module and it’s just a slide there that’s in the video or it’s in the deck, or maybe it’s a text course and that’s okay.
Lesson Slide
Next up is a lesson slide, So this is a traditional couple of bullets. Maybe they’re sequential. one, two, three, ABC. So we’re going to hit this lesson topic. Here’s some stuff you need to know. it could be ordered or not ordered. It could even have a hierarchy and that’s fine.
The point is that this is a common pattern, so you might as well have a template for it. You don’t want each lesson, even within the same course, to start looking different. It’s important to maintain consistency, especially within the same course, and ideally across different training, courses, webinars, YouTube videos, or whatever it is that you do.
This is a common format. And then there are other formats. There might be one with two columns. So you might have a lesson slide with two columns of bullets, and then also it depends on the content. Are you being a little more verbose and it’s really, sentences?
So in this case, you may want to have a slightly different layout, but the point is, you’re going to often have a one-column and a two-column collection of content that you’re teaching.
Big Picture Slide
Another common slide template is a big picture. Maybe it’s a diagram, a photo, maybe it’s what you’re making.
There will be cases where you have one big picture, or perhaps a common example where you use five smaller pictures, each with a label underneath. This might happen often. Once you create and lay out this setup nicely for the first time, save it as a template.
For example, you may have a big picture as the main example, but you could also show variations like three pictures or a series of thumbnails that demonstrate how the pieces connect. Maybe you’re sewing and showing the six steps, with each step represented by a picture. It could resemble a flowchart with pictures.
This might be common in your field, or you may not use it at all, and that’s fine. But the key point is that if you do use this layout, create a template for it. That way, each time you need it, you can quickly crank it out.
You can replace the images. You have a nice heading for each of the photos. Then you have a little description, allow a two-sentence body underneath each picture. You might use numbers like pictures 1, 2, and 3 for each of the three pictures. Again, if you’re definitely gonna have a slide template for a big photo, you might have another one or two other slide templates for these, collages or collections of other photos.
Big Message Slide
Another slide template could feature a big message, such as an inspiring quote, an action step, or something fun like a pop-up quiz or a “Let’s test your knowledge” prompt. It could also reflect your teaching style.
This slide may or may not include a photo underneath or beside it, but you’ll often find that instead of explaining every little word, you might just use a phrase or quote that’s big and high-level. Verbally, you’ll supplement the message, or visually, you might demonstrate with your hands, mouth, or device. Sometimes, a simple, bold message is all you need.
When creating these types of slides, consider the font, color, alignment, and size. While you don’t want to overwhelm your students, figuring out the right look for those big messages is key. Having one of these templates in your collection will definitely be useful.
Example: Slide Templates in your Online Course
Another slide template could feature a big message, such as an inspiring quote, an action step, or something fun like a pop-up quiz or a “Let’s test your knowledge” prompt. It could also reflect your teaching style.
This slide may or may not include a photo underneath or beside it, but you’ll often find that instead of explaining every little word, you might just use a phrase or quote that’s big and high-level. Verbally, you’ll supplement the message, or visually, you might demonstrate with your hands, mouth, or device. Sometimes, a simple, bold message is all you need.
When creating these types of slides, consider the font, color, alignment, and size. While you don’t want to overwhelm your students, figuring out the right look for those big messages is key. Having one of these templates in your collection will definitely be useful.
Title Slides
There will definitely be a title slide. You’ll have a course introduction slide, which could be a thumbnail or a big picture that represents what students will learn by the end of the course, what they’ll be able to do. This transformation is key: before the course, they didn’t know this material, but after completing it, they’ll be able to create something of their own, whether it’s a picture, title, or project.
Once she figures out the layout and design, she can add her branding. This slide could also be used as a hero image on the sales page or as the course thumbnail within her academy.
Creating a title slide as a template that can be reused across different courses and training sessions would be a wise investment for this creative teacher.
Module Overview
Another useful template is a module overview. This could be a high level slide that explains what the next collection of lessons will cover.
For example, it might be focused on layering. This is a moment to orient the student. They’ve just finished a module and are about to start the next one. Before diving into the details, give them a quick high level orientation. “Alright, now we’re going to dive into layering.”
You’re helping students transition so they can follow along more easily. By priming them for what’s coming, they’ll be prepared. If you’re teaching something like patchwork quilting, you might have a lesson slide with numbered bullets. A common pattern. For instance, you might outline the five steps, using bullet points like: Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, and so on. You might even include a picture on the right to illustrate the steps.
Lesson Slide
So, that’s a common pattern, and you might as well just create that lesson slide. You’re going to do this all the time, and they should all look the same. There’s no reason why, it’s not going to look just random. You don’t want it to be random there. They want to focus on the next step that they need to learn. Having that structured lesson slide is a good idea.
Big Picture Slide
Next, this quilting teacher has a big slide, a big picture template where there’s a big picture and there could be no words, or it could be a few words on the bottom or the side. But there’s this need for, we just need to zoom in and look at this big thing.
Maybe it’s the entire quilt once it’s done, or maybe you’re zooming in to one square in your quilt and blanket. Again, this applies to lots of different teachers. You’re going to zoom out, zoom in for that topic of the creative stuff you’re teaching. So that’s another template that you’re going to use.
In this case, the teacher zooms in on that, maybe that square, and says, look, it’s actually, these other patterns, and look at the geometric shapes.
Sometimes you need to zoom in and see the big picture. By the way, it could also be a container for a little video. So in the middle of your course, you might want to give them a video example. Hey, here’s how I laid out my shapes on my square and it could be a video, but again, you’re using a slide template with a big square in the middle, or the video could be outside of that.
But the point is that you have a template for this because this is a common occurrence in your course. So you just have to figure this stuff out, create the template, and then you’re going to see that often you’re showing a big image to your students.
Big Message Slide
Next, you might have a big message slide. So for this teacher who’s teaching this patchwork stuff, she might have words of encouragement to remind the students to enjoy the process and go with the flow. If you cut something a little bit off, go ahead and maybe make it symmetrical, work it in, or layer it.
Again, you might have some big message slides. It could be encouragement or a test. It could be an important fact. Remember, it’s all about the shapes or it’s all about the final product. It’s your message, but you’re going to probably have a slide template that’s going to have a big message.
The big message could have a picture. Maybe it’s not a picture. Maybe it’s an icon or a diagram or maybe it’s focused on those words, almost like a quote, or it could be a big guidance from you, the teacher.
Shopping List
For this particular example, this patchwork teacher often has shopping lists. Since she does this in so many of her different examples and courses, at this point, she should have a template for shopping lists.
Here’s the stuff that you’re going to need to build this thing. You’re going to need this many yards. You’re going to need some different kinds of thread or some stuffing underneath the blankets. So she’s going to have a shopping list template and she uses this and it’s easy, it’s digestible.
Maybe you copy and paste that template into the text of the slide. So you have the video that has a slide on. You’ve copy pasted that and you put that into the text. So you’re reusing it and it’s great that the shopping list has these items.
It has instructions. It has all the words so that they can print it out and use it. Maybe it’s got a cute icon, so every time it’s time to go shopping, maybe there’s a shopping cart icon. This is like how she reminds her students and helps her students go shopping so that they have the right stuff.
Maybe there’s a standard format where it has substitute items. Again, you all are creative teachers. You’re going to do stuff for your different courses and leverage templates, but also be yourself.
What are the specific kinds of unique templates that you need to teach by applying these template skills? Businesses like yours can upgrade your capabilities. You’re going to get better results. Templates are going to help you make content faster. And it’s also going to be digestible for students. So that’s the main takeaway here.
FAQs on Using Slide Templates to Create Your Course Content
Summary: Using Slide Templates to Create Your Course Content
Using slide templates for your course content makes the whole process easier, keeping things consistent, polished, and engaging for your students. Aside from having a great format, delivering great content is also important. Whether you’re putting together an online course, a workshop, or a training session, templates help keep things visually appealing and organized while making key points stand out. In the end, they’re a simple but powerful way to create a smoother, more effective learning experience.
Here are the top things you need to know about slide templates for your courses:
- Having slide templates saves you time
- They help you create content faster
- They help students digest because there’s a standard format for your content
- You can reuse your training material across all your platforms
- You can charge more for a professional look
Next Steps
Remember, at Artsy Course Experts, we’re here to help. Whether you’re building from scratch, fixing tech issues, or planning to scale up, we’ve got your back. If this blog post struck a chord, why not subscribe to our email newsletter? Get regular tips, resources, and insights straight into your inbox to keep growing your creative education empire. Let’s make teaching a grand adventure! 🌟
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