iassVol201


17Spring 1996

Using Computers to Present Sociological Principles

by William Feigelman and Thomas Taylor1, Nassau
Community College, Garden City, New York.

Against the backdrop of the revolutionary changes in today’s
computing technology, it is remarkable that instruction in
undergraduate introduction to sociology courses has
remained virtually unchanged from what it was 25 years ago.
Most of today’s sociology students still start studying the
discipline much as their parents did, aided by conventional
textbooks, anthologies, and paperback monographs.

Today, many instructors feel that unless one has sufficient
time, it may be best to leave computers out of the
fundamentals courses, introducing them later on in the
undergraduate program. Yet, we would maintain that the first
social science course provides an excellent opportunity to
introduce the use of computers to beginning students.

The present approach is based upon working with real social
science data. It draws from the General Social Surveys, done
by National Opinion Research Center, based on national
probability samples of the U.S. adult population and offer
publicationquality data for students to analyze.

The present approach is also based upon the popular data
analysis software developed by MicroCase Corporation,
known as the MicroCase Analysis System. This program is
extremely straightforward and easy to use for beginning data
analysts. With a minimum of keystrokes students generate
easy-to-understand bar graphs, with accompanying
descriptive statistical summary data. This software also
provides clear cut crosstabulation analyses, making it
possible to do two and three-way contingency tests almost
instantaneously.

Campuses with ample personal computer resources offer the
ideal situation for using this approach; but having a
classroom with a computer for every student is not necessary
for employing this approach. Instructors with a PC on a
movable cart, a projection panel, and an overhead projector,
will be able to demonstrate the software in their regular
classrooms on one to three occasions. Once the instructor
devotes several classes to teaching computer and software
use, students should be able to work independently at their
own home computers or at campus facilities. Then, students
follow a set of workbook exercises in Hands On Sociology
(NY: McGraw Hill, 1993).

The book leads them though sets of multiple-choice and
essay questions which they answer while working at their
computers running the MicroCase software. The various

assignments correspond to topics ordinarily presented in
Introductory Sociology textbooks: Culture, Socialization,
Social Stratification, etc.

Then, the EZ-Quiz answering disk software is introduced,
enabling students to log their answers to the groups of
multiplechoice questions onto an electronic record. Later,
after students complete their activities, instructors can
quickly evaluate their work by reading students’ output disks
(or campus network records) with an accompanying
program. Many instructors who have attempted to use
computers with their introductory students have found that
reviewing students’ computer work is often a painstaking
and laborious enterprise. Yet, with EZ-Quiz the instructor
can see at a glance just how much students have learned
from the available batteries of multiple-choice questions.

EZ-Quiz can also be easily reconfigured into a powerful
review and self-study tool, offering students immediate
answer feedback. Thus, EZ-Quiz can be adapted for two
academic purposes: to administer computer-based multiple
choice examinations or to enable instructors to readily create
their own self-study tutorial exercises.

1. Paper presented at the IASSIST/Computing in the Social
Sciences Conference, Hotel Radisson, Minneapolis, MN,
May 1995.