The effect of computer software program, designed for social studies teaching, to academic achievement and attitude

To reach the educational goals, new methods and instructional materials have been developed and used for decades. Computer assisted instruction, computer technologies, and software programs are the ones that show promise among these methods and instructional materials. In particular, computer software programs designed for instructional aims have a great importance in educational activities. With the help of computer software programs prepared to use in educational activities, it can be easy to repeat any subject matter in every time; it can be easy to make abstract phenomena and concepts concrete; it can be easy to reach lots of visual and audio resources toward the content of any subjects. Also, researches related to this area revealed that computer software programs increase the achievement and motivationof students when they are used correctly.For Social Studies education, it is well known that instructional software programs help students to develop their skills such as problem solving, information accessing, information producing, communication and decision making. However, the same literature shows that there are few studies about the place and importance of using instructional software programs in Social Studies education. Furthermore, there are noenough software programs to teach Social Studies. In this case, the aim of this study is to show the developing process of an instructional software program for Social Studies and examine the effect of using a software program in 7th grade Social Studies course on students? academic achievement and attitudes toward the course.Experimental methodology was used in this study. In this framework, pre-test- post-test randomized control-group design (2x2) was employed. Participants were 48 seventh graders (24 in experimental and 24 in control group) from Dr. Kazım Ahmet Mıhçıoğlu primary school located in the school district of Elmadağ in Ankara. This study was carried out during the spring semester of 2009-2010 academic years.During the research period, the course was taught by using Social Studies instructional software program designed by researcher in the experimental group and it was taught by using teaching methods advised in Social Studies curriculum and textbooks in the control group. Academic achievement test and Social Studies attitude scale were used as data sources.SPSS 15.0 statistical package was used to analyze the data. The data were submitted to, Spearman ? Brown correlation coefficient, two-way ANOVA for repeated measures and independent-sample t-test.Results based on the findings showed that using Social Studies software program in Social Studies courses increases students? academic achievement. Additionally, results revealed that using software program in Social Studies courses affect students? attitude toward the course in positive manner.