Microsoft Sway
Microsoft Sway is a versatile presentation app that provides a dynamic platform for showcasing your content to your audience. It allows you to create visually appealing and interactive presentations with ease and engage with your audience.
Microsoft Sway allows users to:
- create presentations using a suite of templates
- embed RSS feeds, HTML pages and different types of multimedia
- develop a presentation collaboratively
- share the completed Sway with specific people or groups
AI elements
Microsoft Sway leverages AI for design assistance, content understanding, text-to-speech conversion, and language translation. This is done using natural language processing (NLP) to help the app understand and interpret content; machine learning (ML) to analyse input, and interactions; and AI powered test to speech functionality.
Microsoft Sway is an alternative to PowerPoint that facilitates active engagement within a presentation. With the ability to customise the layout, it is an interactive web-based presentation where you can enable audience interaction.
List of functions
Key features of Microsoft Sway are:
- Create content with slides, text, and various multimedia files;
- Embed content within Sway;
- Create templates;
- File sharing;
- Built in generative AI functionality.
Microsoft Sway can be used for the following:
- Interactive presentations: make the learning experience more dynamic by incorporating various multimedia elements
- Digital portfolios: this can be used to evidence student work, achievements and progress throughout their degree. It could be used for self-assessment, peer assessment, or summative assessment.
Support resources
Deakin Resources:
Microsoft Sway: a step-by-step guide of why and how you can leverage Microsoft Sway.
Vendor Resources:
Microsoft Learn: explore the different features and functionality of the M365 suite completing modules at your own pace.
Examples
The use cases below showcase some ways in which you can use Microsoft Sway in your practice:
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Knowledge Acquisition
Create content – design and build content using a variety of multimedia resources, so your students can acquire discipline-relevant knowledge
As a teacher I can create discipline-specific content in a web presentation format, incorporating video and other multimedia, then embed the link within CloudDeakin for students to interact with.
My students can interact with topic content, scrolling through the key ideas at their own pace, and depending on media used, play videos, click on images and graphs to enlarge the detail, and access other embedded or linked materials.
Example design considerations when creating content using Sway:
- Carefully structure the content to scaffold the learning, e.g. unfold content through a narrative, pose a question followed by a worked example or content that helps students to build an answer, provide two examples/cases for student comparison then provide a model comparison.
- Use a variety of media, such as text, images, schematics, graphs, video, audio, and authentic representations (e.g. an historical newspaper article or photo).
- A variety of media can be more inclusive and multimodal learning opportunities can be more engaging.
- Beyond controlling the pace, consider other actions your students can control, e.g. click on additional extension materials or case studies to enlarge.
- Provide opportunities for students to do something with their new knowledge, independently, or collaboratively online or on-campus.
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Inquiry
Team inquiry-based learning – student teams present evidence on outcomes from their inquiry
As a teacher I can set an inquiry-based learning and/or assessment task for student teams, tasking them to engage with discipline authentic material, develop ideas, take a critical stance, and present their findings via a multimedia rich resource.
My students can critically analyse material while conducting an inquiry and share their findings with the teacher and with other teams, and therefore actively make knowledge rather than it being delivered to them.
Example design considerations when setting inquiry-based learning using Sway:
- Set a challenging, discipline-relevant inquiry task.
- Construct evidence-based arguments.
- Provide some guidance on how to undertake the inquiry, based on steps such as: negotiate ideas within the team, pose questions, gather and analyse data or other materials, draw evidence-based findings/arguments.
- Provide relevant and authentic resources for the students to critically examine, or task students to find appropriate resources.
- Consider a formal or informal peer review process, where students share their presentations with other teams, using the ‘Share’ function in Sway, to deepen and consolidate learning.
- Determine feedback mechanisms, e.g. formative and/or summative feedback.
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Practice -
Production
Create an artefact on experience – student-generated representation of practice, performance, or product development
As a teacher I want my students to create a multimedia rich representation to evidence their personal engagement with their experiences in on- or off-campus practice, performance, or product development.
My students can reflect on their practice, performance, or product development experiences and create a representation to evidence their learning, through a web-based multimedia presentation which they can share for evaluation and to receive feedback.
Example design considerations when seeking evidence on experience using Sway:
- Clearly communicate aim, e.g. to consolidate key ideas from their practice, performance, or product development experiences and to generate evidence that reflects their active involvement and application of conceptual understanding.
- Allow flexibility in artefact-generation. Sway provides options on how students can present their evidence, e.g. engaging content, various artefacts such as photos, videos, reports, and other pieces of evidence and reflection on evidence.
- Clearly communicate feedback mechanism and assessment requirements, e.g. at which stage/s students need to ‘Share’ their Sway with you to receive timely feedback and assessment grading.
