Each year the International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics (ICTCM) offers faculty the opportunity to catch up on new technologies for teaching math and innovative ways to use them. This year I learned that sometimes the simplest technology can have a huge impact. I attended the talk “Video Wrappers: Moving it Out of the Classroom with Prelabs,” given by a friend from graduate school. Her presentation demonstrated the use of a program called Jing for creating screenshots and short video demonstrations of computer software. Jing looked easy to use and has a free version to download, so I decided to give it a try in my summer section of MATH 200 Introduction to Statistics to create demonstrations on how to use SPSS.

I am often scheduled to teach in a room that doesn’t have a computer and overhead projector for in-class demonstrations. We have a computer and projector on a cart but these are cumbersome and require extra time to set up at the beginning of class. Most of the students in MATH 200 are able to learn to use SPSS from my written directions on assignments, so I have opted to not do in-class demonstrations regardless of whether or not I am in a room with a computer. Instead, I invite students to make an appointment to come to my office for help with SPSS if they want it and I usually have only one or two students (in a class of around 30) take me up on this offer. I thought that Jing demonstrations would provide extra support for students to learn to use SPSS especially since they can watch the videos as many times as they need.

ICTCM was held in March and I did not get around to using Jing until a couple of weeks before Faculty Academy. The few notes I took during the ICTCM presentation and the on-line help provided at the Jing website were enough for me to create usable videos for my students. For my Faculty Academy presentation I created four Jing videos to supplement the directions in the first SPSS assignment for MATH 200. I posted the assignment in Blackboard so that students could easily access the links in Word. After clicking on the link all the students need to do to view the video is click on the start button. Each video follows a detailed set of instructions on how to use SPSS that are in the written assignment. Student response to these videos was very positive so I added Jing videos to two additional SPSS assignments. The assignments and Jing videos are described in the table below.

Jing can be downloaded at http://www.jingproject.com/ . Once downloaded a sunburst icon will appear at the top of the computer screen. Pointing at the icon produces links to three functions: Capture, History, and More. Selecting the Capture option creates vertical and horizontal lines for selecting the capture area on the computer screen by clicking and dragging the mouse. Once the area is selected a menu bar appears with options to either capture an image or a video. Selecting the video option produces a 3 second countdown before the capture begins. Jing includes an option to preview the video before saving it. The menu bar also includes a cancel option (which I used many, many times).

I had a few “production” issues while preparing my first set of Jing videos. The first problem was determining the area of the computer screen to capture. Starting an SPSS session produces a Data Editor and a dialog box asking what the user wants to do, and I had to make sure these would show up in the video. SPSS produces output in a Statistics Viewer window that I also had to make sure would appear in the video. Through trial and error (and much use of the cancel option), I found an area that worked well. Another issue I dealt with was recording sound. I had an older microphone that worked OK, but I was much happier with the results after I purchased a new one. (As a side note I had to very quickly get over not liking the sound of my recorded voice. This was hastened by the fact that almost everyone who watched the videos wanted to know who was doing the speaking for me.) The last issue I had was striving for perfection (another issue involving repeated use of the cancel button). At some point I had to decide that the videos were good enough for their intended purpose. This got easier for me with the second and third SPSS assignments.

At the end of the first summer term, I did an informal survey of my 16 students to get their reactions to the Jing videos. Only one student indicated that she was unable to view the videos and another did not try to use them. The remaining students viewed most or all of the videos for each assignment, even those who had used SPSS before. Most of the students who watched the videos watched them more than once. One student indicated that she did not need to watch them more than once because she did the assignment while watching the videos and just paused the video at each step. All of the students who viewed the videos said they would have liked Jing videos to be included if I had assigned a 4th SPSS project.

SPSS Screencasts

Click to Watch: SPSS Data Entry

Click to Watch: SPSS Explore Command

Click to Watch: SPSS Modifying Output

Click to Watch: SPSS Printing Output

Links to Screencasts Cited and Embedded Above

• SPSS Data Entry
• SPSS Explore Command
• SPSS Modifying Output
• SPSS Printing Output

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