How to Cite a PowerPoint or Course Material (Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard)

Slides sit somewhere between a published source and a private one. A deck on SlideShare or a conference website can be opened by anyone. A deck inside your university's learning management system (LMS) can be opened only by people enrolled in the course. Citation styles care about that difference, because the purpose of a reference is to let the reader find the source.

What to Collect

• Presenter or instructor
• Date of the lecture, or the date the slides were posted
• Title of the presentation
• Course code and title, and the university (for MLA, Chicago and Harvard)
• Platform (SlideShare, Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard) and URL
• Slide numbers for anything specific you use

Course slides are private material, so this guide does not invent a lecturer to cite. The worked examples are the ones the style authorities publish themselves (APA, the MLA Style Center, the IEEE Reference Guide and University College Dublin Library's Harvard guide). Where an authority publishes no example, the format is shown as a template with the parts to fill in set in square brackets.

Quick Reference by Major Style

APA (7th Edition)

Slides anyone can open:

Slides in an LMS, written for readers who can log in:

In-text: (Jones, 2016) and (Mack & Spake, 2018, slide 7)

For the LMS case, give the name of the platform and the URL of its login page, not the deep link to the file. If your readers cannot log in, there is no reference entry. Use a personal communication in the text instead: ([Initials Surname], personal communication, [Month Day, Year]). APA's own example of the form is (T. Nguyen, personal communication, February 24, 2020).

MLA (9th Edition)

Slides in an LMS are cited like material posted to a website, with the platform as the container. The MLA Style Center's own example:

In-text: (Carson), or (Carson, slide 12) for a specific slide.

"PowerPoint presentation" is an optional final element that tells the reader the format. List the instructor as author only if you know the instructor made the slides; otherwise start with the title.

For slides posted on the open web, the site is the container: [Surname, First name]. [Title of Presentation]. SlideShare, [Day Mon. Year], [URL]. Give the author's name as it appears on the slides. If you are citing the lecture as you heard it in the room, and not the slide file, use MLA's format for a live presentation: speaker, title in quotation marks, course or event, date, institution. See how to cite a lecture.

Chicago (18th Edition)

Chicago treats lectures and slides as unpublished presentations. They are cited in a note and can usually be left out of the bibliography. The 18th edition no longer puts the presentation details in parentheses.

Footnote (template):

Bibliography, if required:

Add a URL at the end when the slides are publicly available.

Harvard (Cite Them Right)

University College Dublin Library's Harvard guide gives this example of a recorded lecture on a VLE:

In-text: (Dunphy, 2021)

UK guides use "VLE" (virtual learning environment) where North American guides say LMS. Give the VLE's main address, since a deep link will not work for anyone outside the module.

IEEE

The IEEE Reference Guide's format for lecture notes:

IEEE's own example:

In-text: [1], or [1, slide 7]

The Access Question

Other Course Materials

Handouts and lecture notes written by the instructor. Use the slide format and change the label: [Lecture notes], [Class handout], [Course syllabus].

Recorded lectures. A recording on the LMS follows the same access rule. A recording on YouTube is cited as a video. See how to cite online videos.

Readings uploaded to the LMS. Cite the original article, chapter or book. The LMS is just how it reached you.

Discussion board posts. APA treats a classmate's post in a closed forum as a personal communication when readers cannot access it.

Your own notes from class. These are not a citable source. Cite the slides, the recording or the lecture itself.

Conference slides. If the presentation is part of a conference, cite it as a conference presentation. See how to cite a conference paper.

Slides That Quote Other Sources

Lecture slides are full of other people's figures, definitions and findings. If a slide reproduces a chart from a journal article, the article is the source. Find it from the slide's credit line or the module reading list, read it, and cite it directly. If you cannot obtain it, use a secondary citation that names the original and then the slides: (Miller, 1956, as cited in [Lecturer surname], [year]). See how to cite a secondary source.

APA gives the same advice: when slides cite information published elsewhere, find, read and cite the original yourself instead of citing the slides as a secondary source. Use slides as a map to the reading.

Common Mistakes

• Pasting the deep LMS link, which shows an error page to anyone not enrolled
• Citing the slides for a finding that the slides took from a published study
• Leaving out the bracketed format label in APA
• Using the file name (Week3_final.pptx) as the title
• Giving only the year when the lecture has a specific date
• Putting LMS-only slides in the reference list of a thesis that external examiners will read

Sources for These Formats

• APA Style, "PowerPoint Slide or Lecture Note References" and "Classroom or Intranet Sources" (apastyle.apa.org)
• MLA Style Center, "How do I cite a slide presentation uploaded by an instructor to a learning management system?" and "How do I cite course materials?" (style.mla.org)
• The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th ed., on lectures and presentations, and "What's New in the 18th Edition" (chicagomanualofstyle.org)
• Pears and Shields, Cite Them Right, Harvard section on VLE materials; University College Dublin Library, Harvard style guide, "Lectures/presentations"
• IEEE Reference Guide, version 3.28.2025, section G, "Lectures"

Full style rules: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE.