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Students get more out of textbooks with Camtasia Studio and WileyPLUS

Students are always looking for ways to save a buck. With John Wiley & Sons Inc. online system, WileyPLUS, students have the option of purchasing an online version of their required texts. Not only does the cost of the online version run about 60% less than the printed book, but it also includes end-of-chapter homework questions, testbanks and Study and Practice materials.

Richard Campbell, an accounting professor at Rio Grande University, helped Wiley create some of those supplemental Read and Study materials, and he did it using Camtasia Studio.  At the end of each chapter in the online product, students are offered a variety of materials that will help them better understand the content.

“The Camtasia videos provide an effective and efficient way to learn difficult accounting principles. For example, in Kieso’s ‘Intermediate Accounting’ 13th edition, determining the value of a lease is a complicated problem, traditionally requiring the use of present value tables or a business calculator. This is a tedious, manual process. In a Camtasia movie, I demonstrate the solution using the Function Wizard in Microsoft Excel to solve that difficult problem in a quick and easy manner. In a printed text, documenting those steps would take several pages,” says Campbell.

The process, from a student perspective:

• Watch a PowerPoint presentation introducing the unit. This is a Camtasia Studio movie, produced as a Flash video.
• Read the chapter online. There is the option of printing if reading online is not preferred.
• Watch demonstrations at the end of the chapter.  In the case of accounting, there are Camtasia Studio recordings that demonstrate how to solve problems using Microsoft Excel.
• Complete required homework in the assignment section, which are automatically graded.

In addition to the videos at the end of each chapter, flash cards, crossword puzzles and the PowerPoint presentations are also available.  This gives students multiple study aides and a different way of thinking about the subject matter.

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