Have you ever found yourself fiddling with the Font Size in your slide Text Boxes?  Often right at pre-presentation crunch time?  Well, there's a reason for this experience, and it's not all bad, just some extra work and sometimes irritation when you last need it.

Slideshow software can seem like your using a tool that's very similar to a word processing package but there's a fundamental difference.  Although a new Word Document is based on an underlying Template (called normal.dot), when it comes to a slideshow file, there's more than just starting out with a copy of a Template.

In PowerPoint, each Slide Layout is also based on an underlying Master Template.  It's here where you can save the most valuable time and not have to bother with checking all of your slides, at the last moment, to fuss with making Text Sizes consistent from Slide to Slide.  And, once you've "mastered" master templates, you'll be flying through your presentation-making experience like the pro you are!    ​

For the many years I've been training software courses, going back a considerable way - lol, the amount of time spent is my biggest lesson learned.  Even if all students or attendees are really engaged, "time" for absorbing new information will kick-in, like it or not.

It's been interesting because it's the same whether it's a one-to-one session or a group session.  In a one-to-one session, right around the one-hour mark, students will start slowing down and when comfortable with their trainer, will ask to start closing out the training.  In larger, but small groups, it goes closer to the one and a half hour range or two when signs of absorption fatigue kicks in.

It's nice, in some way, to think if you commit to a longer training time that you will be getting more.  But, you won't especially with software.  You'll just get fatigued and all the "good stuff" you learned in the first part of the time together will start to get fuzzy.

And that's exactly why my online, instructor-led software training sessions are intentionally set to be 2 hours in length for the fundamentals and 1 hour for advanced topic level times.  I highly recommend not getting into whole day sessions - split your learning experience into smaller, easy to handle, and most effective learning journeys.  You'll then be refreshed soon after and ready for another!