Most presentations work in a straight line. Slide one, slide two, slide three, all the way to the end. That works fine for a lot of lessons, but it’s not the only way to do it, and for certain activities it’s actually quite limiting.
With a bit of setup, you can add hyperlinks between slides so that clicking a word, shape, or image takes you to a completely different part of the presentation. This is sometimes called non-linear or branching presentation design, and once you’ve seen a few examples of it in action, you’ll start thinking of ways to use it in your own classroom.
This post walks through four practical examples of how teachers can use this approach, and explains how to set it up in PowerPoint, Google Slides, and Canva.
Why Bother With Non-linear Slides?
The short answer is that it lets your presentation respond to what’s happening in the lesson, rather than forcing you to work through slides in a fixed order.
A contents page lets you jump directly to the section you need, which is useful for CPD sessions or longer lessons where you might want to revisit a topic without clicking back through everything. A branching story gives pupils genuine choices that affect the outcome. An image map lets them explore a diagram by clicking on different areas. An identification key guides them through a series of questions to reach an answer.
None of these are flashy for the sake of it. Each one serves a real purpose in the classroom, and all of them can be built using tools you already have.
Four Ways to Use Non-linear Slides
1. Contents Pages
If you deliver CPD or teach a topic that spans several distinct sections, a contents page with clickable links lets you navigate directly to the part you need. You can also add a small back button on each section slide to return to the contents page, which keeps things tidy and avoids a lot of unnecessary clicking.
This works particularly well if you deliver the same session to different groups and sometimes need to skip sections or revisit them depending on how the conversation goes.
2. Branching Stories
This is probably the most immediately engaging example for primary pupils. You set up a scenario, present two or more choices, and each choice leads to a different slide with a different outcome. Pupils can then face another decision, and so on.
It works well as a story starter: whatever slide a pupil ends up on becomes the scene they write about. It also works as a class reading activity, with groups following different paths and comparing where they ended up. Pupils can create their own branching stories too, which involves a fair amount of planning, sequencing, and writing before they even open the software.
3. Image Maps
An image map lets you make different parts of a picture clickable, each one linking to a different slide with more detail about that area.
In PowerPoint, you draw a transparent shape over the area you want to be clickable, then add a hyperlink to it. In Google Slides and Canva, the simplest approach is to copy the original image, crop it down to just the area you want to be clickable, overlay it on top of the original, and then add a hyperlink to that cropped version. It’s a slightly roundabout method, but it works well once you’ve done it once.
Image maps suit any topic where you want pupils to explore a setting or diagram: a school grounds map, a cross-section of a plant cell, a historical image, a map of a habitat.
4. Identification Keys
This is a particularly good one for science, and the logic maps directly onto the kind of branching identification keys pupils already use on paper.
Each slide poses a yes or no question (“Does it have fins?”). The yes answer links to one slide, the no answer links to another, and you work through a series of questions until you reach a conclusion. It’s worth sketching the structure out on paper before you start building it in the software, just so you can keep track of where all the links are going.
Pupils can work through a key you’ve created, or they can build their own for a topic they’ve been studying, which involves thinking carefully about the characteristics of different organisms and how to distinguish between them.
How to Set Up the Links
In PowerPoint
Highlight the text or select the shape you want to link from. Right-click and choose Link, then select Place in this Document and choose the slide you want to link to. For shapes, you can also use Insert, then Action, which gives you similar options. To test a link without running the full slideshow, hold Ctrl and click on the linked text or shape.
In Google Slides
Highlight the text or select the image, right-click, and choose Link. Select Slides in this presentation and then choose the slide you want. For images, if the link option doesn’t appear in the right-click menu, look for Insert Link in the toolbar at the top.
To create a transparent clickable area over part of an image, draw a shape, add a link to it, then click the fill colour and choose Transparent. The shape becomes invisible but still clickable.
In Canva
Select the text or element you want to link, click the Link option in the toolbar, and scroll through the slides to choose your destination. The link won’t work in the editing view, but it will work when you present.
Classroom Application
Three things you can try straight away:
- Build a simple identification key for your current science topic. Sketch the branching structure on paper first, then build it slide by slide. Start with five or six organisms and four or five questions. Test it before sharing it with pupils.
- Set up a branching story starter for your next writing lesson. Create three or four possible endings to a scenario and let pupils click to find out which scene they’ll be writing about. It takes about 20 minutes to build once you’ve got the hang of the linking.
- Give pupils a contents page for a longer topic. If you’re teaching a unit across several weeks, a clickable contents slide lets pupils navigate back to earlier material when they need it, and saves you time hunting through slides during the lesson.
A Note on Planning
The one thing worth emphasising before you start is that a bit of planning on paper goes a long way, particularly for identification keys and branching stories where the links can quickly become difficult to keep track of. A rough diagram of which slides link to which takes five minutes and will save you a lot of confusion later.
Once you’re comfortable with the technique, it’s also worth thinking about whether pupils could create these themselves. Building a branching story or identification key requires real thinking about structure, logic, and content, and the software skills involved are straightforward enough that the task stays focused on the subject knowledge rather than the technology.
Summary
Non-linear presentations are a simple idea with some genuinely useful applications across subjects. Contents pages, branching stories, image maps, and identification keys can all be built in PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Canva using the same basic technique: a hyperlink that takes you to a specific slide. None of them require extra tools, specialist knowledge, or a lot of preparation time once you’ve tried it once.
Watch the video tutorial for a walkthrough of each example, including how to handle transparent clickable areas in Google Slides and Canva.
Have you tried nonlinear presentations in your classroom? Share your ideas in the comments below.
How to Make Interactive Branching Presentations in PowerPoint, Google Slides and Canva
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