The video series, The Adventures of Jasper Woodbury focuses on mathematical problem-solving. Each 15-20 minute video in the series presents a challenge or problem that students must solve before seeing how the major characters solved the problem. Content is anchored in the life of characters with whom the students can identify in order to motivate them to reason about complex problems. Also important in this approach is an emphasis on being able to move from a general understanding of a complex problem to a context in which overall goals can be generated.
Students learn to represent multiple solution paths to the problems being solved.
Teacher materials emphasize that there are many possible solutions. Students can follow up their work on a Jasper adventure with more personalized, student-generated projects that are related to the adventures. The Jasper videodisc adventures present problems in a real-life story or context. Learning is contextualized. The knowledge being learned is used as a tool to accomplish the tasks.