Abstract
Some would suggest teaching history is more the process of teaching the thoughts and actions of individuals than the conceptualization of events. The understanding of major changes in man's thinking, reflected in subsequent events, create a good foundation for the additional acquisition of factual knowledge. The intended result of this research was for the simulation user to develop a better insight into the actual thinking of significant historical personages. Two simulations were developed, one being the antithesis of the other, in order to represent both sides of the ideologies in conflict. The study was a formative small group evaluation (12 subjects) performed during the evaluation phase of the simulation instructional design. It is a proof of concept evaluation for the potential effectiveness of the computer model concept and not a formal quantitative statistical evaluation. A pre-post semantic differential was used to assess the user's impression of the simulated role profile. A simple experimental design was comprised of a series of two one group, pretest, experimental method, posttest configurations, each treated as independent treatments. A statistical analysis for the global assessment and for individual composite variable assessment of the semantic differential was performed using a T-test: Paired two samples for means method. An additional factor analysis test, an orthogonal rotation method (SPSS Quartimax), was used to further quantify specific profile items assessment changes. Some of the results were significant and suggest additional applications of the simulations, however, because of the small subject population used, no generalizations can be made based on this study.
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