Context
Presentations are an effective way to make learning engaging and can be used for synchronous lectures and asynchronous content. When designed for assessment, students can present their work and demonstrate their learning through engaging, multimodal presentations. Presentations can be created in tools such as MS PowerPoint, Google slides, and Canva.
Canva, a commonly used presentation and visual design tool, has added AI features. Bundled as Magic Studio, you can enter a prompt to generate text, images, videos, and presentations.
Generating a Presentation
Magic Studio has clear guidelines and recommends a simple prompting process that consists of a minimum of five words. The following presentation comprising of seven slides was generated using the prompt “The role of Education on Climate Justice”.
What do you notice about this presentation?
Observations
The generated presentation followed a style that avoids overwhelming the audience with excessive text, promoting a more engaging and visually appealing experience. The slides follow the same layout for consistency, and the information is presented through a combination of text and images.
While this is a professionally looking presentation, the source of the content remain ambiguous. Nelson Mandela is quoted without a clear reference to when he made this statement. The accuracy of content needs review for correctness and relevance. Furthermore, the absence of hyperlinked examples makes it challenging to access and confirm the authenticity and credibility of content. This issue is also present with the images. The images are sourced from the internet but the absence of citations poses a challenge for verifying the source. Additionally, from the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) lens, the image featured on slide 5 evokes a depiction associated with warfare, which is neither inclusive nor clearly relevant to the topic of climate justice. The presentation fails to meet the accessibility requirements, as the colour contrast in the design does not meet the minimum accessibility standards.
At this time, Canva emphasizes their commitment to user privacy. User data is not shared for training purposes without opt-in consent. While tools like Magic Studio offer a starting point for content creation, ensuring the accuracy and relevance of the content is ultimately the user’s responsibility. Not only the images, but the text generation may include bias, propagate western perspectives, and ignore cultural sensitives. Any copyright material that is included or referenced would require proper citation. To ensure academic integrity, students should explicitly cite if they have utilized an AI tool for their assignments.
Alternative AI Presentation Tools
As AI presentation tools become more powerful, they are likely to support a variety of multimodal forms of storytelling. While the quick and easy production may be alluring, does that mean humans would be spending more time checking and validating the content? Will these tools impose their own rules and condition our thinking? Will this give rise to new pedagogies? How much agency will students have to be creative in their work?
Are there any AI presentation tools you have used? What did you like? What were your concerns?