Abstract:

The computers along with advancements in instructional technology have been used to develop, animation, simulation audiovisual materials in educational environments. As a result of this the concept of computer assisted training has emerged (Gürbüz and Birgin, 2008:199). Computer assisted training is the use of computers as a tool to help teachers to enrich and improve the quality of education during educational activities. In other words the computers are used as learning and teaching tool with activities such as repeat, problem solving, directly provide the course contents and research ((Kurt, 2009:141). This research, was materialized with the aim to examine the attitudes of teacher candidates social studies towards Computer Assisted Training (CAT), within the context of independent variables like gender, frequency in the use of computers, owner/ not owner of a PC, and their class level. The sample group of the study was composed out of 238 students who continued their study at the Firat University, Faculty of Education, Depaertment of Social Studies. The Attitude scale of Computer Assisted Training, which was developed by Arslan (2006), was used as a data collection tool in this study which applied the survey model as one of the quantitative research methods. The results were evaluated with the SPSS 17 statistical package. The independent t-Test and the one –way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used while the data were analyzed. Although there was no difference observed in the attitudes of theacher candidates social studies towards Computer Assisted Training (CAT) related with gender, there were significant differences observed in the frequency in the use of computers, owner/ not owner of a PC, and their class level.

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