Social Change and Ethnicity: A Multimedia Approach.

This paper describes a multimedia aid to teaching about ethnic relations in American history, whose purpose is to enhance student understanding of the sub ject through visual and musical images. The instruc tional technique and its content are relevant to a wide range of courses, not only to those on ethnic relations. Bower cites evidence that visual imagery can aid the learning of abstractions (2). The abstraction here is that social change in America forms three phases: agrarian, industrial and post-industrial (1). This history of the na tion frames that of its ethnic groups, and both are il lustrated with photographs and music in this slide and music presentation. Our approach is consistent with the statement of Brown, Lewis and Harcleroad (5) on the merits of still photography in instruction, and that of Quinney, (8) and Smith (9) on the use of film in the teaching of social science. It is also consistent with our experience. Recognizing that students are individuals and respond as such to instruction (7), we nonetheless find that in our own state university most students come from culturally homogeneous backgrounds and have a time perspective bound by their own biographies. It is dif ficult to teach about different ethnic groups in an historical framework. Therefore, we developed a slide and music presentation. Visual images and music were used on the premise that today's students turn toward both for meaning. Historical photographs from a multitude of sources