How to cite PowerPoint slides and lecture notes in APA 7

Use this for slides or lecture notes your instructor or another speaker posted. APA gives one format for slides on a classroom site or a learning management system (Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, Sakai or a company intranet) and for slides posted publicly online.

Reference list format

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of the slides in sentence case [PowerPoint slides]. Site Name. URL

Reyes, T. (2024). Introduction to research methods: Week 3 [PowerPoint slides]. Westbrook University Learning Portal. https://example.edu/course/week3

• Author. The person who made the slides, usually your instructor.
• Year. The year the slides were created or last revised, as the file or the page shows.
• Title. Italic, in sentence case.
• Description. [PowerPoint slides] in square brackets, not italic. Use another label if it fits better, such as [Lecture notes].
• Source. The name of the site, then the URL. If readers must log in, give the address of the login page.

When to use a different format

• Your reader can’t get the slides. If the audience has no access to the classroom site, APA’s guidance is to cite them as a personal communication instead. See citing a personal communication.
• Slides from a conference talk. Use the conference presentation format, which names the conference and its location. See APA’s page on conference presentations.
• A lecture from an online course or MOOC. The instructor is the author, and the link goes to the course’s main page, since learners must enrol to see the content.

In-text citation

Use the author and year: (Reyes, 2024) or Reyes (2024) explained that…

Check before you submit

• Ask what your instructor allows. Some instructors don’t want lecture slides cited as a source in a paper. Cite the readings the slides point to instead.
• Slide design isn’t an APA matter. APA doesn’t govern the look of slides, only how to cite them.