5 ways to use Microsoft Sway

Below you will find 5 tips/ ways you can use Sway. We base these ideas on Joe Hartland’s use of Sway as an interactive handbook/website for his teaching in the TLHP and on the 3D helical theme.

Sway is part of the Microsoft Office 365 suite of tools. It is free to use for UoB staff and students. You can expand each suggestion below to see details including how to guides. Note: to get used to Sway, it is worth experimenting with settings, templates and the way images and graphics are displayed. If new to Sway, try Microsoft’s Getting Started guide.

1. Create an interactive index page/ cover sheet to break up content

If you have a lot of content, you can quickly end up with a big document. Joe found it helpful to create an initial cover sheet Sway with introductory text, and an index linking to separate Sway documents covering each Topic.

How: Create a series of Sways for your topics. Create a separate Sway as your Index/cover sheet. Use the Share option to get the link to each Sway you want to use as a section. In your cover sheet, type any overview/introductory text and then type the topics you want to link to. Use the insert link tool within the Sway text editor to paste the link to each section.

2. Add images, groups of images and slideshows to Sway

You can display images in Sway in several ways. For example, you can add images so that they appear as slides, or a card-like stack of images that you can flick through.

Joe added images of PowerPoint slides within his Sway presentation so that students could view them as a slideshow. Elsewhere Joe used a stack of images for students to flick through.

How – From the Sway storyline, use the + icon. Choose Group, and then select the type of group you want eg slideshow or slides. Click to add your media, for example by uploading images from your computer. Repeat to add more.

Tip – If uploading a PowerPoint as Sway slides, add a link to the original slideshow to provide an accessible alternative. Better still, upload and link to the slides uploaded to a Blackboard page – students will benefit from the multiple accessible formats generated by Blackboard Ally.

3. Embed videos from YouTube, or create video versions of PowerPoint slideshows

Sway makes it very easy to embed videos, for example, from Youtube. Besides content already on Youtube, you can create your own videos, for example by exporting a video version of a narrated PowerPoint presentation, and adding to Stream or Youtube.

How: The guides below explore adding videos, as well as narrating PowerPoint slides and exporting PowerPoint slides as video
Add video of audio files to Sway
Create a Video version of a PowerPoint
Narrate a PowerPoint slideshow

Tip: For your own videos, meet accessibility requirements by adding closed captions.
Add closed captions to Stream
Add closed captions to a YouTube video

4. Highlight sections of text for emphasis, for example, to emphasise an activity or instruction

Besides formatting with bold and italics, you can add emphasis by selecting Emphasise for a text card. For example, Joe Hartland uses emphasis to highlight an activity for his students.

How: Add your card in the usual way. Click the Emphasise setting. When you view the presentation, you will find the text size is bigger. Exactly how it is emphasised depends on style settings for the presentation.

5. Add interactivity by embedding a Microsoft Form or a Padlet board

A standard Sway is about presenting information. You can add interactive content by embedding it in Sway. For example. you can add a quiz or a survey using a Microsoft Form. You can also embed a Padlet board. Full list of supported tools

How:
Embed content in Sway
Creating a Form survey or quiz

5 ways to use Microsoft Sway

See also

FoHS TEL