Professor Corinne Hoisington’s Favorite Online Teaching Tool

Corinne Hoisington is the Professor of Information Systems Technology at Central Virginia Community College.
It sounds like many of us will be able to connect remotely with our students or higher education colleagues this fall. One of the biggest challenges is making these remote interactions feel more like in-person classes. PowerPoint Live is my solution!
PowerPoint Live is a hot topic for both education and enterprise organizations. It can be used to enhance in-person events such as lectures, corporate all hands and town halls. The world has changed a lot since 2020. (Yes, your eyes rolled.) This has been hard on us all–our students as well as our faculty would love to have some normalcy. Here are the reasons I am excited about this tool and how it will benefit students and faculty:
PowerPoint Live: All Course Formats Available
PowerPoint Live is available to everyone in the audience. Students can connect from any device (laptops, tablets, or phones) and follow along with the presentation.
Students can also navigate through slides at their own pace, without affecting the presenter. The audience can give instant feedback to the presenter via live reactions (emojis) and comment or rate the presentation at end.
All these capabilities are possible with the power and flexibility of artificial intelligence (AI). Anyone can enable live subtitles in any language on their device using the power of AI. This is a great way to support people with hearing impairments and breaks down language barriers to encourage inclusion and engagement. You can see that your eyes have stopped rolling.
PowerPoint Live: Post-Session Perks
Audience members can give feedback to the presenter by filling out an optional survey powered Microsoft Forms. This will allow the presenter to receive responses and make suggestions on how to improve his presentation skills.
If someone joins the presentation after the deadline, they will see the captions and the transcripts along with the slides before them. Live Presentations allows everyone to navigate the deck independently, so they can spend more time on each slide if they miss something.
Any member of the audience can express themselves in real-time using Live Reactions. This not only ensures everyone is included in the presentation but also provides valuable information for the presenter about how the presentation is received.
How to Present Live in PowerPoint
How do you present live in PowerPoint? Here’s a quick overview of what you need to know:
Open your browser, and go to Office.com
Log in to your school’s email address and choose PowerPoint. You must use PowerPoint online. Present Live in Microsoft Teams is also available.
Presenters must have a Microsoft 365 subscription to use Live Presentations. To participate in Live Presentations, audience members do not need a subscription. Presenters cannot use Safari at the moment. However, it works fine for audience members.
How to Use PowerPoint Live
These are the quick steps to get you started.
Live Presentations can be used by opening your PowerPoint slide deck in PowerPoint for web and going to the Slide Show tab.
First, check your audience setting. To select who should be able connect to this presentation, click the drop arrow beside Present Live.
Next, choose Present Live. Your presentation will start with a screen showing a customized QR code. You can also launch your Live presentation using the slideshow toolbar.
Your audience can point their devices cameras at the QR code and tap the link that appears above the QR code. PowerPoint Live will load your presentation into their web browser. They don’t need to install anything. After your audience loads the presentation, they will see your spoken words displayed on the screen in almost real-time. This is especially useful in situations where the acoustics are poor or if your audience members have difficulty hearing.
Watch and bookmark the video demo by Corinne to see PowerPoint Live in action.