Ensemble Ins truct ion: A Note on Communi ca t i ng Socio logy Via

Computers

DAVID R. HEISE

Computer sof tware can manage intricate operations and complex data in order to make sociological ideas and methods concrete, animated, and relevant even to novices. This note describes how an approach called "ensemble ins t ruc t ion" makes use o f such sof tware in classrooms with personal computers f o r each s tuden t and a central projec- tion system.

For a long t ime, soc io log ica l ideas w e r e d i f f icu l t to c o m m u n i c a t e b e c a u s e of t he i r vagueness , t he i r abs t r ac tness . E v e n t u a l l y e m p i r i c a l r e s e a r c h and f o r m a l m o d e l s m a d e it poss ib l e to re la te s o m e of these ideas to c o n c r e t e events , bu t on ly

t h r o u g h c o m p l e x and e x h a u s t i n g analyses that r equ i r e a c o m p u t e r . That lef t us hardly be t t e r of f in c o m m u n i c a t i n g ou r d i s c ip l i ne as long as c o m p u t e r s w e r e h idden in c a m p u s c ryp t s and addres sab le on ly by the e rud i te .

The a p p e a r a n c e o f pe r sona l c o m p u t e r s in the late 1970s o f fe red the p r o m i s e of a n e w c h a n n e l o f c o m m u n i c a t i o n for e x p r e s s i n g soc io log ica l insights . However , those w h o e m b r a c e d the n e w t e c h n o l o g y d i s c o v e r e d that, l ike a t e l e p h o n e sys- t em, c o m p u t e r s are no m o d e of c o m m u n i c a t i o n unt i l the uni t s are w i d e s p r e a d . By the mid-1980s , ava i lab i l i ty o f uni t s had passed the cr i t ica l po in t , yet f rus t ra t ion c o n t i n u e d b e c a u s e of p e o p l e ' s r e l u c t a n c e to learn spec ia l p u r p o s e p r o g r a m s on the i r own.

The e f fec t iveness of n e w e d u c a t i o n a l r e s o u r c e s p r o v i d e s n e w g r o u n d s for op- t imism. C o m p u t e r s , indeed , can be a means of c o m m u n i c a t i n g s o c i o l o g i c a l ideas

to a w ide aud ience , bu t p u b l i c a t i o n - r e a d e r is not the p a r a d i g m that app l i e s . C o m p u t e r s may w o r k bes t e d u c a t i o n a l l y as a m e d i u m for e n s e m b l e i n s t ruc t ion ( l ike e n s e m b l e talk w h e r e f r iends re la te a nar ra t ive in c o n c e r t ) , w i t h the so-

David R. Heise, professor of sociology at Indiana Llniversity, is a former editor of Sociological Methodology and of Sociological Methods & Research. His current work focuses on the analysis of social interaction within the framework of affect control theory. Additionally, he is developing methods for studying the logical structure of events in interaction sequences. Please address corre- spondence to Department of Sociology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405.

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ciologist conduct ing via a project ion screen and computers on everyone's desk providing the facility for doing sociology together. Then, after such experiences, people may find the discipline more usable and helpful and proceed to use the theories and methods on their own.

In this paper I describe such academic usage of personal computers , describing activities in one of my own classes for the sake of concreteness . Resources provided by my university consist of small classrooms equ ipped with microcom- puters for each student; clusters of thirty to fifty microcomputers spread around campus where students can go for computer access out of class; overhead projec- tors in classrooms; and LCD panels for displaying compute r screens on overhead projectors. The compute r software that I use is distr ibuted free to students. I The software includes PC-WRITE--a versatile word p roces so r - - a s well as programs writ ten especial ly for social psychological analyses.

A C o u r s e o n S o c i a l I n t e r a c t i o n

Most undergraduates have never touched a compute r before they enter my courses. That was the case in the course I describe h e r e m a senior-level course on social interaction. Yet four weeks after the beginning of the semester, students handed in their first paper, wri t ten and printed with compute r software and containing a compute r analysis. Their rapid progress is the direct result of three technological advances in the 1980s: personal computers that are appliance-like in their s implici ty and that bypass an obfuscating compute r bureaucracy; efficient and foolproof word-processing programs; and the recent introduction of afford- able LCD panels that al low compute r screens to be projected in a classroom with an overhead projector so that students can be tutored in actual processes of compute r usage.

During the first week, the project ion system was used to teach students the essentials of compute r operat ion and how to copy master disks deposi ted at the library. The second week students were taught how to use the word-processing program by utilizing the project ion system and hands-on, follow-along with com- puters at their desks. During the third week, students learned how to use their first program for co l lec t ing and analyzing social psychologica l da t a - - aga in through use of the project ion system and follow-along. This program has general research applicability, so I will describe it briefly.

The ATTITUDE Program

ATTITUDE collects and analyzes judgments of verbal stimuli on bipolar graphic rating scales (Heise 1982). For example, the program could collect judgments on a good-bad rating scale with "Italians," "Germans," "Mexicans," and the like as verbal stimuli, and, thereby, it wou ld be an instrument for collect ing data on ethnici ty attitudes. Up to 100 stimuli can be entered. The default scales measure Evaluation (good-bad) , Potency (power fu l -power less ) , and Activity (lively-

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quie t ) - -un iversa l dimensions of response discovered through semantic differen- tial research (Osgood, May and, Miron 1 9 7 5 ) - - b u t other scales can be defined using any verbal anchors.

Stimuli are rated by using cursor keys to move an arrow along a ruler line on the screen. The ruler line has intervals marked off by adverbs--sl ightly, quite, ex- tremely, in f in i te ly - -and anchor words or phrases (like "good" versus "bad") define each end. Stimuli appear at the top of the screen in random order. Scale anchors change in random order; and lef t - r ight orientation of scale anchors is randomly switched. Data from different respondents are accumulated automat- ically into a file, and, on command, the program computes means and standard deviations of ratings and graphs the means.

The program provides a short tutorial as well as practice at making actual ratings. For their first paper, students in the social interaction course used this program to rate themselves and another person involved in some emotional inci- dent. The assignment was to rate each person from each person's viewpoint in order to practice taking the role of others and to see graphical ly the con- sequences - - the varying sentiments that are operative in a social situation.

The INTERACT Program

My course emphasizes the applicabili ty of affect-control theory (Heise 1979; Smith-Lovin and Heise 1987) to the study of social relationships. This theory posits that people construct experiences in order to affirm sentiments attached to identities and behaviors in a situation. A judge, for example, is extremely power- ful, fairly esteemed, and reserved. To maintain these sentiments in interaction with an a t t o rney - -who is less powerful, equally esteemed, and less rese rved- - the judge has to engage in acts like advise, counsel, consult, instruct. With a thief, a judge has to reprimand, convict, and sentence in order to maintain the con- ception of a judge as powerful, esteemed, and reserved and to maintain senti- ments about thieves as powerless, stigmatized, and uninhibited.

Although the core ideas are simple, the theory employs structural equations, large banks of sentiment measurements, and a mathematical model in order to make predictions. It is not an easy theory to teach. Accordingly, students were given a computer simulation program--INTERACT--that implements the theory, and were instructed in how to use the program for analyzing interactions.

INTERACT's inputs and outputs are entirely verbal, computat ions proceed invis- ibly, and quantitative aspects of predictions need not be examined at all unless desired. A user simply fills out a series of forms, saying how many persons of what gender are together, how they see themselves and each other in verbal terms (like "rich woman" or "son" or "mugger" or "c lown") , and what kinds of restrictions might constrain choices of behaviors and of new identities (e.g., a relationship might allow only verbal behaviors or it might permit both verbal and physical behaviors). Then the program reports its predictions of the interactants' behaviors toward each other under the assumption that they indeed are trying to confirm

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situational sentiments. The predict ions are compu ted numerical ly but translated to words for presentation; for example, the program suggests that if a man and a woman are together, the man might try to "entertain" the woman. Deviant events can be forced into an interaction, whe reupon the program predicts verbally what emotions might result, what behavior responses might occur, or what labelings and attributions might arise. Predictions are credible enough so that it is no embarrassment to have students use the program.

Students in the interaction course learned this program by fol lowing along at desktop computers whi le the screen on my compute r was displayed with the project ion system. A single session was enough to master essentials of the program so that students could begin examining theoretical predict ions on their own. Later sessions were devoted to matching observed interactions with computer- generated sequences in order to gain insights into what identities and reidentifica- tions might be operative in a real situation, how behaviors are interpreted, what emotions might be felt by different participants.

From then on, students' understanding of the theory behind INTERACT came via a pract icum focused on exper iences in their own lives. The compute r simulation program served as the functional equivalent of a laboratory where they could test the theory against their exper iences and assay their exper iences with the aid of the theory. Odd predict ions that they related in class provided me with oppor- tunities to explain some social psychological facts (like the significance of sub- cultures, derogation of victims, etc.) and to discuss possible technical reasons for predict ion failures (like sampling errors, specification, and estimation problems in modeling) .

E d u c a t i o n a l O u t c o m e s

The power of this new technology can be apprecia ted from the fact that no student required more than a few minutes of out-of-class tutoring in order to keep up. Furthermore, even during the per iod of intensive int roduct ion to computers , more than half of the class t ime was devoted to substantive issues rather than technical matters. At the end of the semester students had submit ted four 1,500- word papers, each wri t ten and pr inted with a word processor on a personal computer. The mechanics of creating well-edi ted reports with professional ap- pearance had been largely mastered.

Each of their papers dealt with a personal exper ience recorded in e thnographic style, then analyzed with concepts from social psychology and the sociology of emotions. That in itself is nothing unusual, but a new dimension was added by the employment of compute r analyses be tween the descript ion of exper iences and the interpretation of them. The compute r programs al lowed students to make concrete connect ions be tween their own exper iences and abstract sociological notions like "definit ion of the situation," "identi ty confirmation," "emotional appraisal of social standing," "labeling as a means of interpreting motivation," "sanctioning as a means of maintaining moral boundaries: ' The result was that

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these concepts were used with enthusiasm, with subtlety, and with critical judg- ment.

My assessment at the end of the semester was that the undergraduate students had attained high levels of sophistication in social psychological interpretation of social interactions. Even the less successful students were applying complex the- ory correctly. The most successful students applied the theoretical ideas skill- fully, and they were able to interpret experiences with remarkable sociological insight. I had not at tempted before to teach affect control theory to undergradu- ates because of its complexity, and, even with graduate students, I could do little more than present abstractions. Teaching the theory to beginners and having it applied in everyday life is an accomplishment resulting from computer tech- n o l o g y - f r o m special software and ensemble instruction in a classroom equipped with microcomputers for everyone.

C o n c l u s i o n

Computing technology now allows sociology to be brought alive within a class- room and supports powerful research tools that even novices can use for practical social analyses. The keys to doing this are powerful-but-friendly computer pro- grams and enough technological resources to do ensemble instruction in the classroom. Computers running substantive sociological programs become a me- dium of communicat ion between instructor and students, and students can use the programs on their own to apply ideas to their own experience, concretizing sociological abstractions.

Though I focused only on programs for social psychological analyses, similar software is appearing for use by macrosociologists as w e l l - - f o r example, the Chipendale program by Davis (1987) and the Showcase series by Cognitive De- velopment, Inc. (Suite 141, 12345 Lake City Way NE, Seattle WA 98125). As researchers recognize that personal computer programs are an effective channel for communicat ing theory and data, we will see more programs that are useful in education.

Classrooms equipped with personal computers and projection equipment are not the norm in universities, but the arguments for acquiring these facilities are compelling. (1) We do not train students properly unless we prepare them to use the computers that they will find on their desks in the work world. (2) Computer usage in social science courses has significant pedagogical benefits, functioning like the laboratory exercises in physical sciences where students apply ideas actively. (3) The costs of microcomputer technology have decl ined so dramat- ically that the creation of a classroom equipped for ensemble instruction amounts to a small fraction of the total computer budget at most schools.

N o t e

1. The programs discussed in this paper, all for MS-DOS personal computers , may be obta ined wi th documenta t ion from National Col legia te Software Clear inghouse . Box 8101, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695.

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References

Davis, James A. 1987 Social Differences in Contemporary America. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Heise, David R. 1979 Understanding Events: Affect and the Construction o f Social Action. New York: Cambridge

University Press. _ _ . 1982 "Measuring at t i tudes wi th a PET," Byte: The Small Systems Journal 7: 208-46. Osgo~l , Charles E., W. H. May, and M.S. Miron. 1975 Cross-Cultural Universals o f Affecttve Meaning. Urbana:

University of I l l inois Press. Smith-Lovin, Lynn, and David R. Heise. 1987 Affect Control Theory: Research Advances. New York: Gordon &

Breach.

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