The Utility of Screen Capturing Software as eLearning Authoring Tool
By: Dr.-Ing. Zelalem Hailu
1. Introduction
Screencasting is a process of creating interactive demonstrations and software simulations. You take a series of screenshots of a running application. The software records your actions and instantly creates a simulation or screencast. The movies can be in a variety of formats like Standalone EXE, Macromedia Flash SWF, AVI format or the Windows Media Video (WMV) format or as streaming presentations from a website. You can even burn the simulations / demonstrations on a CD for mailing them to the person who wants to acquire knowledge from them.
Screencasts can be used for describing software projects, reporting bugs, and explaining interactions. Just as a screenshot is a picture of a user's screen, a screencast is essentially a movie of what a user sees on his monitor. And if a picture is worth a thousand words, a movie is worth a thousand pictures. Creating a screencast helps developers of software show off their work. It is a useful skill for ordinary software users as well, to help report bugs (the movie takes the place of potentially unclear written explanations) or to show others how a given task is accomplished in a specific software environment.
2. Personal Experience with Screencasting Techniques
The idea of using a screen capturing software appealed to me as a means of avoiding repeated demonstration of the same topic to different audiences. I have a couple of instances in which I was able to use screen capturing techniques to practically implement the idea.
The Ethiopian Civil Engineering Association approached me and a colleague of mine with a request to develop a website for the Association. A series of meetings were held in which the Executive committee members of the association discussed with us the requirements for establishing the website of the Association. When it became apparent that other members of the committee also wish to hold similar discussion with us, I decided to prepare a video clip showing how the final appearance of the website would look like. The video clip is a screen capture of a sample home page of the association showing all possible pages and links to the page. The clip has also narration which explains what product the association should expect at the end. To enable any member of the association to view the sample home page and to give his/her comment on the home page, I uploaded it in a sub-section of my own website. For any one who wishes to see this sample page, the URL is as follows:
http://www.teknochain.com/intermediate
Unfortunately, the narration in the site is in Ethiopian National language i.e. Amharic. For that reason, eLDI_Africa participants from outside of Ethiopia could not listen to the narration but only see the cursor movement and the animated gif pictures on the home page which I developed using Macromedia Fireworks.
Yet there is another occasion where I used screen capture software effectively. One of the renowned Engineering companies in Ethiopia requested me to develop their website. It took me sometime to assemble the necessary resources to develop a hypermedia based website. I demonstrated how the website works to some of the top officials of the company. However, I soon realized that the website needs to be circulated among different departments for checking the consistency and relevance of the information in the developed website. At this stage I prepared a simulation of the website showing the full interactivity of the website. I then made several copies of the simulation in CD ROMs so that the different heads of the departments could watch the website offline at their own convenience. The idea worked fine and it spared me a lot of time of making explanation to each and every department head.
The above two cases are situations in which I was able to spare myself of the need to make unnecessary and repeated explanation about a web-based product. But, there are numerous occasions where it would be necessary to explain to people how to use simple application software like Microsoft Outlook, or some functions in text processing or spreadsheet software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). By simply recording the required operations using screen capture software and sending the recorded clip to the person who wants to learn the operations is an important way of exchanging knowledge. This is specially so if you or the person who wants to learn the operation are unable to arrange a meeting for a face-to-face demonstration of the operations. A simple example, would be to record how the various features of the gc21 platform works, like the pinboards, the document pool, the portfolios and others. As participants of the eLDI_Africa workshop we were fortunate enough to receive a face-to-face demonstration of the functionalities of the gc21 platform. Imagine, if an online course were to start without a face-to-face session at the beginning, then a simulation which shows how the platform works would be unavoidable at the beginning of the online session.
3. Some Common Screen Capturing Software
A variety of screen capturing software are available which can be used for the purpose explained above. So as not to take too much of the reader’s time, I will limit myself with brief explanation of some of the screen capture software I am familiar with.
i) Wink
In the face-to-face session of the eLDI_Africa program, we were given a brief introduction to open-source screen capture software called Wink. Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software. Using Wink it is possible to capture screenshots, add explanation boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for users. By capturing screenshots, mouse movements and specifying one’s own explanations with them. Using all this in a standard Windows-based User Interface with drag-and-drop editing makes it possible to create high quality tutorials or documentation. These types of tutorials are valuable in making the teaching learning process ever livelier by breaking the monotone of delivering lecture notes in text format only.
ii) Macromedia Captivate
One of the proprietary software known for screen capturing used to be called RoboDemo.
Later the company called Macromedia acquired RoboDemo and reintroduced it as Macromedia Captivate. Captivate has all the capabilities discussed under Wink above. However, products of captivate can also be easily integrated with other Macromedia Software (Macromedia Breeze, Director, Flash, Authorware and so on). It also works fine in standalone form for those wanting to capture screen action and output it in another format. Recently Adobe has acquired Macromedia and come up with a strong web development bundle known as the Adobe Bundle. It is expected that captivate 2.0 may acquire some powerful video editing capabilities from Premiere Pro, Adobe’s video editing software.
iii) Camtasia Studio
Camtasia Studio can help you record and edit videos of screen activity in all multimedia formats and enhance the captured material with special effects, narration and a variety of multimedia features. With Camtasia Studio, you can teach and demonstrate complex ideas and subtle points visually, rather than through words alone with exact video renderings of desktop activity.
4. Training Companies Relying on Screen Capture Tools
As explained above screen capture software are particularly suited for teaching software. When you teach a software application, you essentially demonstrate to the learner how to use the various functionalities of the software based on appropriate examples. Therefore, many companies in the IT business have long started benefiting from the utility of screen capture software as a means of developing their courseware. It is nowadays possible to teach any kind of software. The two most important requirements are:
i) the developer should have an excellent knowledge of how to use the screen capture software
ii) the developer should work with a person with an excellent knowledge of the software to be taught (with subject matter expert)
If the person who is expert in the software to be taught is also capable of manipulating the screen capture software, then that makes life a lot easier. Therefore, it is much logical to teach the use of the screen capture software to the subject matter expert.
Software Tutorials and Training software companies like Total Training, Lynda and VTC are amongst the top companies who use screen capture software to create video tutorials of software educational training. For instance, VTC is a virtual training company which has managed to develop full-fledged tutorials on more than 400 different software types. These companies are naturally commercial and they have monthly or yearly subscription fees on the basis of which they make their online training packages available. They also sell their training packages in the form of CD-ROMs for offline learning.
5. Conclusions and Recommendations
An eLearning course can be developed to various degrees of complexity based on the investigation made during instructional design stage. Depending on the facilities available to the target group, the formats of course delivery will probably vary from one setting to the other. Accordingly, in situations where there are no constraints, it is recommended to raise the quality of educational material by making use of an optimum mix of all types of media formats. It is usually not recommended to reduce the degree of complexity of the eLearning course to a level where it is totally devoid of hypermedia elements. This is specially so for Engineering and Technical Vocational Education programs which require the visualization capacity of the learners.
Therefore, it is essential whenever necessary to include appropriate multimedia elements by way of adding value to the eLearning process. And one of the most common ways of doing so is by using screencasting techniques. This article has discussed briefly the different tools used in screencasting and how they are used to improve quick and efficient exchange of knowledge or information. Therefore, it is recommended for people who are engaged in developing eLearning courses to get to know the screencasting techniques and to apply them for improving the quality of the courses they are engaged in developing.
1. Introduction
Screencasting is a process of creating interactive demonstrations and software simulations. You take a series of screenshots of a running application. The software records your actions and instantly creates a simulation or screencast. The movies can be in a variety of formats like Standalone EXE, Macromedia Flash SWF, AVI format or the Windows Media Video (WMV) format or as streaming presentations from a website. You can even burn the simulations / demonstrations on a CD for mailing them to the person who wants to acquire knowledge from them.
Screencasts can be used for describing software projects, reporting bugs, and explaining interactions. Just as a screenshot is a picture of a user's screen, a screencast is essentially a movie of what a user sees on his monitor. And if a picture is worth a thousand words, a movie is worth a thousand pictures. Creating a screencast helps developers of software show off their work. It is a useful skill for ordinary software users as well, to help report bugs (the movie takes the place of potentially unclear written explanations) or to show others how a given task is accomplished in a specific software environment.
2. Personal Experience with Screencasting Techniques
The idea of using a screen capturing software appealed to me as a means of avoiding repeated demonstration of the same topic to different audiences. I have a couple of instances in which I was able to use screen capturing techniques to practically implement the idea.
The Ethiopian Civil Engineering Association approached me and a colleague of mine with a request to develop a website for the Association. A series of meetings were held in which the Executive committee members of the association discussed with us the requirements for establishing the website of the Association. When it became apparent that other members of the committee also wish to hold similar discussion with us, I decided to prepare a video clip showing how the final appearance of the website would look like. The video clip is a screen capture of a sample home page of the association showing all possible pages and links to the page. The clip has also narration which explains what product the association should expect at the end. To enable any member of the association to view the sample home page and to give his/her comment on the home page, I uploaded it in a sub-section of my own website. For any one who wishes to see this sample page, the URL is as follows:
http://www.teknochain.com/intermediate
Unfortunately, the narration in the site is in Ethiopian National language i.e. Amharic. For that reason, eLDI_Africa participants from outside of Ethiopia could not listen to the narration but only see the cursor movement and the animated gif pictures on the home page which I developed using Macromedia Fireworks.
Yet there is another occasion where I used screen capture software effectively. One of the renowned Engineering companies in Ethiopia requested me to develop their website. It took me sometime to assemble the necessary resources to develop a hypermedia based website. I demonstrated how the website works to some of the top officials of the company. However, I soon realized that the website needs to be circulated among different departments for checking the consistency and relevance of the information in the developed website. At this stage I prepared a simulation of the website showing the full interactivity of the website. I then made several copies of the simulation in CD ROMs so that the different heads of the departments could watch the website offline at their own convenience. The idea worked fine and it spared me a lot of time of making explanation to each and every department head.
The above two cases are situations in which I was able to spare myself of the need to make unnecessary and repeated explanation about a web-based product. But, there are numerous occasions where it would be necessary to explain to people how to use simple application software like Microsoft Outlook, or some functions in text processing or spreadsheet software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). By simply recording the required operations using screen capture software and sending the recorded clip to the person who wants to learn the operations is an important way of exchanging knowledge. This is specially so if you or the person who wants to learn the operation are unable to arrange a meeting for a face-to-face demonstration of the operations. A simple example, would be to record how the various features of the gc21 platform works, like the pinboards, the document pool, the portfolios and others. As participants of the eLDI_Africa workshop we were fortunate enough to receive a face-to-face demonstration of the functionalities of the gc21 platform. Imagine, if an online course were to start without a face-to-face session at the beginning, then a simulation which shows how the platform works would be unavoidable at the beginning of the online session.
3. Some Common Screen Capturing Software
A variety of screen capturing software are available which can be used for the purpose explained above. So as not to take too much of the reader’s time, I will limit myself with brief explanation of some of the screen capture software I am familiar with.
i) Wink
In the face-to-face session of the eLDI_Africa program, we were given a brief introduction to open-source screen capture software called Wink. Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software. Using Wink it is possible to capture screenshots, add explanation boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for users. By capturing screenshots, mouse movements and specifying one’s own explanations with them. Using all this in a standard Windows-based User Interface with drag-and-drop editing makes it possible to create high quality tutorials or documentation. These types of tutorials are valuable in making the teaching learning process ever livelier by breaking the monotone of delivering lecture notes in text format only.
ii) Macromedia Captivate
One of the proprietary software known for screen capturing used to be called RoboDemo.
Later the company called Macromedia acquired RoboDemo and reintroduced it as Macromedia Captivate. Captivate has all the capabilities discussed under Wink above. However, products of captivate can also be easily integrated with other Macromedia Software (Macromedia Breeze, Director, Flash, Authorware and so on). It also works fine in standalone form for those wanting to capture screen action and output it in another format. Recently Adobe has acquired Macromedia and come up with a strong web development bundle known as the Adobe Bundle. It is expected that captivate 2.0 may acquire some powerful video editing capabilities from Premiere Pro, Adobe’s video editing software.
iii) Camtasia Studio
Camtasia Studio can help you record and edit videos of screen activity in all multimedia formats and enhance the captured material with special effects, narration and a variety of multimedia features. With Camtasia Studio, you can teach and demonstrate complex ideas and subtle points visually, rather than through words alone with exact video renderings of desktop activity.
4. Training Companies Relying on Screen Capture Tools
As explained above screen capture software are particularly suited for teaching software. When you teach a software application, you essentially demonstrate to the learner how to use the various functionalities of the software based on appropriate examples. Therefore, many companies in the IT business have long started benefiting from the utility of screen capture software as a means of developing their courseware. It is nowadays possible to teach any kind of software. The two most important requirements are:
i) the developer should have an excellent knowledge of how to use the screen capture software
ii) the developer should work with a person with an excellent knowledge of the software to be taught (with subject matter expert)
If the person who is expert in the software to be taught is also capable of manipulating the screen capture software, then that makes life a lot easier. Therefore, it is much logical to teach the use of the screen capture software to the subject matter expert.
Software Tutorials and Training software companies like Total Training, Lynda and VTC are amongst the top companies who use screen capture software to create video tutorials of software educational training. For instance, VTC is a virtual training company which has managed to develop full-fledged tutorials on more than 400 different software types. These companies are naturally commercial and they have monthly or yearly subscription fees on the basis of which they make their online training packages available. They also sell their training packages in the form of CD-ROMs for offline learning.
5. Conclusions and Recommendations
An eLearning course can be developed to various degrees of complexity based on the investigation made during instructional design stage. Depending on the facilities available to the target group, the formats of course delivery will probably vary from one setting to the other. Accordingly, in situations where there are no constraints, it is recommended to raise the quality of educational material by making use of an optimum mix of all types of media formats. It is usually not recommended to reduce the degree of complexity of the eLearning course to a level where it is totally devoid of hypermedia elements. This is specially so for Engineering and Technical Vocational Education programs which require the visualization capacity of the learners.
Therefore, it is essential whenever necessary to include appropriate multimedia elements by way of adding value to the eLearning process. And one of the most common ways of doing so is by using screencasting techniques. This article has discussed briefly the different tools used in screencasting and how they are used to improve quick and efficient exchange of knowledge or information. Therefore, it is recommended for people who are engaged in developing eLearning courses to get to know the screencasting techniques and to apply them for improving the quality of the courses they are engaged in developing.
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