Adding a slideshow to your Open edX course

Slideshows are a commonly used way of presenting information, and there are a number of ways of importing them into your Open edX course. 

In this article, we're going to cover one of our preferred methods of inserting a slideshow, by using Google Slides, but this will pretty much work with any tool that provides an HTML embed code for your presentation, such as PowerPoint Online. Simply skip down to where we add a Raw HTML component and paste the embed code!

First things first, you'll need your slideshow. You can either create this directly on Google Slides or import an existing presentation into Google Drive and open it up in Slides. Either way works, so long as you end up with your presentation open in Slides.

It's worth noting that if your presentation was created in another tool such as PowerPoint, the Google Slides version may need a little work to fix any formatting or layout issues.

Once you're done editing or creating your presentation, Click File and select Publish to the web... from the menu.

In the window that appears, select the Embed tab and hit Publish. You'll likely get a prompt to confirm that you're sure you want to publish. Hit OK on this prompt.

Once you've confirmed that you want to publish, you'll be given an HTML embed code. Select all of it and copy it to your clipboard.

Now you just need to find where you want to put your slideshow. In Studio, navigate to the unit in which you would like to insert your slideshow, and insert a new HTML component. We recommend using the Raw HTML template, as it'll open straight up into the HTML editor.

Once it's inserted, hit Edit to open up the editor.

Replace the HTML code that's there with the embed code you copied earlier and, optionally, change the width value to 100%. This will make the width of your presentation resize dynamically on smaller screens, such as mobile devices.

Once you hit Save, you should see your slideshow appear on the page! Just make sure you hit Publish to make it visible to learners, and you're done.