To cite lecture slides in MLA format, you treat them like any other source posted to a website: list the author, the title of the presentation, the platform where you accessed it, the date, and the URL. The exact format depends on whether you accessed the slides through a learning management system like Canvas or Blackboard, received them as a handout, or viewed them during a live lecture.
Works Cited Entry for Slides on an LMS
Most lecture slides you’ll need to cite were uploaded by an instructor to a learning management system. The MLA Style Center recommends citing these the same way you would cite any material posted to a website, following the MLA format template. The basic structure looks like this:
Last Name, First Name. “Title of Presentation.” Name of LMS, uploaded by Last Name, Day Month Year, URL. PowerPoint presentation.
Here’s a concrete example:
Carson, Sandy. “Introduction to Digital Humanities.” Blackboard, uploaded by Carson, 20 Oct. 2019, blackboard.ucla.edu/. PowerPoint presentation.
The name of the learning management system (Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, D2L) serves as the container title, which is why it’s italicized. The “uploaded by” detail and the URL to the platform’s login page come next. Adding “PowerPoint presentation” at the end is optional but helpful. MLA allows you to include the format as a supplemental element for clarity, and it’s a good idea since it tells your reader exactly what kind of source they’re looking at.
When the Slides Have No Title
Plenty of instructors upload slide decks without formal titles. When that happens, you create a description in place of the title. MLA’s rule for untitled works is to capitalize the description sentence-style, meaning only the first word and any proper nouns get capitalized. Do not put the description in quotation marks or italics.
For example, if your biology professor uploads a set of slides about cell division with no title on the file or the first slide, your entry might begin:
Paulson, Maria. Lecture slides on cell division. Canvas, uploaded by Paulson, 14 Feb. 2024, canvas.university.edu/.
You can also use square brackets around the description if you want to make it extra clear that you supplied the title yourself, like [Lecture slides on cell division]. Both approaches are acceptable.
In-Text Citations
For parenthetical in-text citations, use the instructor’s last name. If you know which slide the information appears on, include the slide number after the name:
(Carson, slide 12)
If you don’t know the slide number, or the slides aren’t numbered, just use the last name alone:
(Carson)
When you introduce the instructor by name in the sentence itself (“According to Carson, digital humanities draws on…”), you only need the slide number in parentheses, if you have one. If there’s no slide number to add, you don’t need a parenthetical citation at all in that sentence, since the author is already named and lecture slides don’t have page numbers.
Slides From a Live Lecture
If you saw the slides during a live, in-person lecture and they were never posted online, the citation shifts slightly. You won’t have a URL or an LMS to list. Instead, treat the source more like a lecture or class presentation. Include the course name and the institution as location details:
Paulson, Maria. “Cell Division and Mitosis.” Introduction to Biology, 14 Feb. 2024, State University. Lecture.
Here the course name isn’t italicized because it’s not a container like a website. The institution stands in for the location, and “Lecture” at the end describes the format. If the presentation had no title, substitute a sentence-style description the same way you would for an LMS source.
Slides Found on a Public Website
Sometimes lecture slides live on a public site like SlideShare, a university’s open courseware page, or a professor’s personal website rather than behind an LMS login. In that case, the website name becomes your container, and you include the full URL:
Torres, David. “Machine Learning Fundamentals.” MIT OpenCourseWare, 8 Sept. 2023, ocw.mit.edu/courses/example-url/. PowerPoint presentation.
The logic is identical to the LMS version. The only difference is that you’re listing a publicly accessible website instead of a platform like Canvas, and you can include the direct URL to the file rather than a login page.
Practical Tips for Getting It Right
Finding the date can be tricky. If the slides themselves don’t show a date, check when the file was uploaded to the LMS. Most platforms display an upload timestamp. Use that as your publication date. If no date is available anywhere, you can omit it from the entry, though having a date always strengthens a citation.
For the author, use whoever created the slides. That’s usually the instructor, but occasionally a teaching assistant or guest lecturer prepares them. If slides are credited to multiple authors, list them in the order they appear on the source material, separating two authors with “and” and using “et al.” after the first author when there are three or more.
When your instructor uses slides created by a textbook publisher or another source, cite the original creator as the author and note where you accessed them. If the instructor significantly modified the slides, you may need to credit both the original author and the instructor, listing the instructor in the “uploaded by” position.