The Computer as a Teaching Aid: A Report on Two Class Projects

Abstract

ALTHOUGH quantification, especially where it involves the use of a computer, has become a recognized, if often controversial, tool for historical research,' little attention has been given to the possibility of using it as a teaching vehicle. Yet statistics and computers can offer exciting alternatives to the traditional term papers on much-hackneyed subjects which seldom stimulate the intellects of either the students who write them or the teacher who reads them. Further, class projects using quantification are applicable to classes of virtually any size or level of sophistication (certainly to any college history class). Much more important, in such projects every student plays the role of historian. Depending upon the design of the project, students may define the focus of the research, evaluate the evidence, and, as a class, conduct an investigation the scope of which would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. No special expertise is required of the student, and actually little on the part of the instructor. Based