SIMPLE GAMES FOR TEACHING SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES: FOUR EXAMPLES OF THE DO-IT-YOURSELF APPROACH.

The task of communicating basic sociological perspectives to today's introductory students can be greatly facilitated by integrating experiential methods with the traditional lecture and discussion format. Toward this end, we can use simple learning games which anticipate and/or reinforce themes and concepts discussed in texts and lectures. Instructors are urged to develop their own teaching games, which can be structured or improvisational, utilize either a role-playing or small groups approach. Instructions, design considerations and evaluation of student responses to four games devised and piloted by the author for use within the one-hour class period are presented as examples: the Humor Game, the Gender Change Game, the Stratification Game and the World System Game. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]