How to improve your handouts
Why improve your
handouts ?
Providing a purposeful handout can directly help and support a learner in class or allow them to continue independently with their learning away from class, either to practise a new skill or to read supportive material and prepare for the next class.
Text descriptions in a handout might be sufficient to engage many learners; on the other hand adding suitable graphics to a handout can add significant value for many learners, particularly those with disabilities or with visual learning preferences. Visually impaired learners may find concise diagrams much more effective to access than long written descriptions.
By following a few steps and considering some best practice guidelines you can ensure your handouts support your learners, regardless of their needs.
How to improve handouts
The following instructions will show you how to create a paper-based handout for Kim and an electronic document for Peter. Kim has dyslexia and needs to have some adjustments made to meet her needs; in fact many of the adjustments would help all learners. Peter has mild visual impairment.
Paper-based handout
-
Open
the document named room_setups on
your E-Guides USB memory stick: Content
creation > Activity
files > room_setups.doc.)
Highlight all of the text (CTRL +A) and change
the font style to Verdana.
Verdana, Arial, Helvetica and Comic Sans are easy-to-read font styles.
- Highlight
the text again (CTRL +A) and change the font
size to 14. An appropriate font size for
documents and handouts is 12 or larger.
- It
is recommended to use 1.5 line spacing
within text to enable easier reading and
tracking of words. Highlight the text (CTRL
+A) and use SHIFT key + 5 to place the
text into 1.5 line spacing. Alternatively,
go to Format > Paragraph >Line
Spacing.
- It is good practice to avoid capital letters, as they are difficult to read, or use them sparingly. Highlight the heading and change the case to ‘Sentence Case’. Format > Change Case > Sentence Case.
A suitable image can help a reader to understand the concept of the text. One of the images in the document is a photo and the other is a clipart image. A poor-contrast colour image placed on a document that is subsequently printed using a black printer will not help a learner with visual difficulties. It is often difficult to see good or poor contrast when looking at a colour image.
-
Click
on to the top image. If the Picture
Toolbar does
not appear go to View > Toolbars > PictureClick
on the Image Control button
on the toolbar. Select Grayscale from
the drop down choice.
- Repeat
the procedure with the lower image. Note
the contrast of both images when you select Automatic to
return the images back to full colour.
- You may wish to delete the lower image as it has offers poor contrast and adds little to the context of the text.
Kim
sees ‘marching ants’ when presented
with a handout with black text on white
paper. She is more comfortable reading
dark blue text on pink paper.
Highlight
the text (CTRL +A) and change the colour
of the font. Format >Font >Font
Color. Alternatively, use the
shortcut symbol on the Formatting Toolbar.
- Save this document as Room setup Kim on your E-Guides USB memory stick. File > Save As.
Electronic
document or handout
Some handouts are presented to learners in electronic form and accessed using a computer.
Peter has missed a session of his Art class so he needs the handout sent to him by email. He has a mild visual difficulty, which means he prefers a coloured background to all documents. The following instructions will help you create the handout that can be emailed to Peter.
- Open
the document named ‘Italian’ on
your E-Guides USB memory stick: Content
creation > Activity files > Italian.doc. Follow
the same instructions as above for steps 1 – 4.
- Alter the background colour of the document to a pale grey. Format > Background > 25% Grey.
File size
When you attach a document to an email you need to consider the file size. For most email facilities, such as Microsoft® Outlook®, an attached document greater than 2MB in size, might not be delivered as intended. It is essential to check the file size, especially if images have been inserted into a document. The following tips can help when creating electronic documents.
TIP 1
Make sure you insert an image into a document using Insert > Picture > From File. If you copy and paste an image into a document Microsoft® Word adds unnecessary information within the file when it’s saved. (See diagram below showing the two file sizes.)
TIP 2
If you need to add screen
shots within a document it is a good idea to
copy and paste the image into image editing
software initially. The image can be saved
as a JPEG file. JPEG image editing and compression
software, such as Macromedia Fireworks, PaintShop
Pro, Photoshop CS3 will also allow you to reduce
the file size of a JPEG image. The screen
shot can be inserted into the document as usual
(Insert > Picture > From
File).
If you need to capture a small section of the screen it is worth downloading software such as Snippy, which allows you to select a specific region to capture. If you need a full screen capture there is very little difference between software such as Snippy and the Print Screen key in the overall file size created.
TIP 3
If
a document is just over the 2MB limit for attachment,
you might want to compress the entire document
using a zip facility such as WinZip® or Microsoft® Windows®’ own
zipping facility. Zipping 
software can compress documents
and files. In Windows® Explorer, right-click on
a document to see a prompt to Archive.
The Archive name and parameter dialogue
box opens. Place a check beside Zip and
confirm OK.
The ‘Italian with inserted image’ document (shown above) has been reduced to 33 KB after zipping.
Further resources
