Teaching frequently involves demonstrating skills or sharing information with learners. Whether it is in the face-to-face or virtual classroom student routinely ask the "How do I....?" question. Many students are very visual learners who respond more fully to instructions that are visually compelling, while others are auditory learners who can hear an instruction once and have committed the content to memory. Therefore, content or instructions that can be combined in a multimedia way has the best chance of appealing to a wide range of learners.

When it comes to computer-based learning, there are a number of screen capture tools that instructors can use to rapidly create multimedia instructions that can easily be shared with colleagues or students. Some of these tools, such as SnagIt capture static image of the computer screen that can then be used to augment textual information. Other tools use video-capture of an ongoing computer task, such as showing students how to access an online journal article in the library database, so that the instruction is a 2-3 minute real-time instruction that includes the full demonstration of the multiple steps it takes to complete a task that is augmented by audio comments from the instructor completing the task. Most would agree that if many task-related questions could be answered with a clear, concise multimedia demonstration, that could be created once but used many times, that this would be very helpful to learners.

Jing is an example of a free tool that can provide these types of compelling instructions. Jing can be used to show students how to navigate online courses, to show colleagues how to use new features of a new piece of software, or any other short (less than 5 minutes) video capture from a webcam or other source. Here is an example of using Jing to capture my computer screen as I showed students how to set-up an RSS-feed. These videos can also be embedded in online courses or other webpages like this:



If you want to give Jing a try you can download it or watch the Overview Video on Jing homepage see if it is something you want to try.

Tim