Before we started designing our slide decks, we spent a year going to classes and analyzing what instructors and students need. It turns out that there are a lot of subtle differences between the needs of students and instructors. Long story short, we reimagined slide decks to design Instructor Slides, Graphics Slides and Student Slides, available with every chapter.
1. Instructor Slides
Until now, instructors have been using legacy publisher slide decks, which help save time by providing a useful summary of the key points students need to learn.
The challenge is that they typically don't look great, which reflects poorly on instructors. There's also a missed opportunity to support instructors in engaging students.
So we went to work and designed Instructor Slides that:
Cover the key information students need to learn.
Look great, reflecting well on the instructor.
Provide suggestions for in-class activities including discussions and activities that relate to the content.
Include in-class practice problems, with step-by-step solutions.
Can be edited by instructors
Downloading Instructor Slides
You can download pdf and ppt versions of the Instructor Slides for each Chapter in your Control Center.
Go to your Control Center.
Click on the "Instructor Resources" tab.
Search for the Chapter you are teaching. Note, only Instructor Slides that relate to the Chapters in your Blended Teaching textbook will be available. You won't be able to find Instructor Slides for Chapters you are not covering.
Download the slides - either in pdf, or ppt formats.
Voila 🦄 You can edit them, remove pages, add pages, whatever you like. They're all yours. You can even share them with other instructors.
We Advise Against Sharing Instructor Slides with Students
Students do not have access to Instructor Slides. We recommend against sharing them, as they contain notes designed just for instructors. Students have their own version that they can download.
2. Graphics Slides
When we design Instructor Slides, we try to incorporate the most relevant imagery from the Textbook. But, there may be occassions when you want to add some other specific images or tables from the Textbook.
To make this easy, where possible, we include a separate slide deck that contains useful graphics from the Chapter. We call these Graphics Slides.
Downloading Graphics Slides
Graphics Slides are available in the same location as the Instructor Slides. Just go to the Control Center, to the Instructor Resources tab, and search for the relevant Chapter you want graphics for.
Students do not have access to Graphics Slides.
3. Student Slides
Until now, instructors have been sharing their slide decks with students through their LMS. This isn't ideal, because often your slides are designed for teaching, not for taking notes.
However, we've designed Student Slides, which students can easily download themselves from the platform. Student Slides are the same as the Instructor Slides, except that they don't contain any "Presenter Notes", so all of the activities, in-class problems, solutions, etc, are removed.
That way, you can keep hold of the activities, discussions, in-class problems and step-by-step solutions, and the students can have all of the core content that they need.
Downloading Student Slides
You can download the Student Slides in the Control Center, in the Instructor Resources tab, in the same way that you can download Instructor Slides.
Students can not currently download Student Slides through the platform. They can only access them if you share them with the students. We are building a mechanism for students to access them directly within each chapter. This will be live at some time during the fall 2025 semester.