Game Shows for Learning: Part 2

This blog post will provide some general tips and guidelines for setting up a PowerPoint-based game show. Whether you set it up from scratch or modify a template, a completed game show will have the following features:

* a categories slide

* question and answer slides for each category

* action buttons for navigation settings

* a score board slide (optional)

* content on each question and answer slide

If you just want to modify a template with a preset navigation style and you don’t need to customize the look and feel of your game show, Microsoft offers two free “quiz show game” templates available for download and modification: one where the answer appears on the same slide as the question and another where the answer will appear on a separate slide. Both templates have preset slide navigation settings, and you could modify either template to your specific needs.


If your specific needs require a particular style and unique slide navigation settings, then you may want to build your PowerPoint-based game show from scratch. If you plan to do this, I recommend the following sequential steps:

1. Determine how many questions you want for each category.
2. Write out your questions and answers.
3. Organize any multimedia files that you will use in your questions or answers.
4. Set up your categories slide.
5. Create sections for each category, and create the scoreboard slide.
6. Create the slides needed for each category in the respective section.
7. Arrange your question and answer content into their respective slides.
8. Use action buttons to preset the navigation pathways

The Categories Slide

The categories slide is like the home page of your game show. It should feature a text box, word art, or image representing each category as well as a question box for each question in the given category. Make sure that the question boxes tell the players how many points are up for grabs. When you are setting up your action buttons later for navigation purposes, don’t forget to turn your question boxes into action buttons that navigate to the question slides.


Sections of Q&A Slides

In your slide menu, you can create sections under which you can group certain slides. Grouping your question and answer slides under sections can help you keep track of the category to which they correspond and which question and answer slides belong together.

When you organize your text, video, audio, or images into your slides, remember not to overload your learners with too much one on slide at one time. Use these multimedia elements carefully to accomplish the learning objective that matches the slide.


The Scoreboard Slide

You can include a scoreboard in your game show by creating a slide that has a text box for each team that will participate in the game show. After each question is answered and you’re ready to record the scores, you click on an action button that takes you from the answer slide to the scoreboard slide where can edit the scores for each team within the text boxes. Don’t forget to include an action button on the scoreboard that can take you back to the categories slide for the next round.


Action Buttons

You can use action buttons to preset navigation pathways from the categories slide to each question slide, from each question slide to its respective answer slide, from each answer slide to the scoreboard slide, and from the scoreboard slide back to the categories slide. These buttons permit the quick, easy, and smooth instructor-controlled transitions necessary for a fun, focused game show experience. Don’t forget to turn your question boxes on the categories into action buttons.

Your Next Game Show

Congratulations, you just completed your game show! If you plan to use the same style of appearance, layout, and navigation again for your next game show, then you can resave your PowerPoint file as a new file, give it a different name, and then update the question and answer content in the game show. Then you can also change the appearance, layout, navigation settings, and number of slides or categories as you see fit. However, if making your next game show requires redoing everything in the game show file, you may want to build again from scratch instead.


If you need training on how to use the PowerPoint functionalities mentioned in this post with your version of PowerPoint, you can find the video-based trainings about all current versions of PowerPoint at You can also contact us at the Exchange for tips, training, or advice. We’re always happy to help!