Basic timing question

Ken, I'm assuming those PPT slides don't have audio.  In that case, what I’d do is insert silence for the amount of time you want the slide to stay up.  You can do it in the audio editor – there’s a Silence button and after you click it, you type in how long you want the silence to be.

There may be a better way, but that’s how I’ve done it in the past.  (My silences have never been as long as 3 or 5 minutes - more like seconds - but I assume it would work the same way.)

Ken,

I have seen where just inserting a silence doesn't work, so you might want to record static noise for those times and then reduce the volume by 99%.

Of course what is going to happen is that your learners won't want to stay on a slide for 5 minutes. 5 minutes is an eternity to sit on a screen. This will frustrate your learner who will only need 20 seconds to read the content on the page before they are ready to move on. So please ask yourself if this is a good design for learning and if this is how you would want to be treated if you were a learner.

Thanks for the tips guys. It's weird that there isn't a way to do that. @Charles, the class is for a federal regulated training course. The slides must all be timed to ensure they are taking the proper hours. The PowerPoint ends up being a placeholder so they can click a link on the page and review a website with info. The timer just ensures they had the amount of time necessary to count as approved hours. 

I wouldn't make somebody read 4 bullets with a 5 minute lock on the slide. That would be pretty lame...

Ken I have seen it done before my friend.

Also let me do a quick rant ...Govt regulations confound me. When did seat time equate to learning?

That's a good point, but in our industry people never head much use for learning. They could make so much money from 2000-2007 that taking a break to learn was out of the question. If a timer wasn't implemented they would just click a few buttons and move on through the class. Internet trainers dropped the quality of their education to junk level and people were basically paying a fee for nothing. The timers at least ensure they stay on and click every 5 minutes. The thought is that if they have to pay that close of attention then they might just learn a little. 

We have always been a live training company because we find we get the people who really want to learn. This year, I got sick of watching the e-trainers make money off of shotty education. So, we moved in with high quality e-learning. It should sell pretty well. This Articulate program allows us to run all video training with some great clips that will actually help people learn. I love raising the bar!