The article deals with the problem of using cloud technologies in the training of sociology students in Ukraine. The popularity of Twitter in Ukraine is analyzed. The possibilities of using Twitter as a learning tool in classroom are discussed. List of recommended tweeters, including Ukrainian resources as well as resources related to population censuses is proposed. The article offers examples of student activities for Social Statistics and Demographics courses. The article demonstrates that new forms of student’s activity related to data analysis introduced by academics and practitioners (building art objects and storytelling based on data; shared data collection by citizens through mobile devices, “play with data” modern data visualization services) can be realized with Twitter resources and can help overcome the barriers that arise while studying quantitative methods.

The article deals with the problem of using modeling in social statistics courses. It allows the student-researcher to build one-dimensional and multidimensional models of the phenomena and processes that are being studied. Social Statistics course programs from foreign universities (University of Arkansas; Athabasca University; HSE University, Russia; McMaster University, Canada) are analyzed. The article provides an example using the education data set – Guardian UK universities ranking in Social Statistics course. Examples of research questions are given, data analysis for these questions is performed (correlation, hypothesis testing, discriminant analysis). During the research the discriminant model with group variable – modified Guardian score – and 9 predictors: course satisfaction, teaching quality, feedback, staff-student ratio, money spent on each student and other) was built. Lower student’s satisfaction with feedback was found to be significantly different from the satisfaction with teaching. The article notes the modeling and statistical analysis should be accompanied by a meaningful interpretation of the results. In this example, we discussed the essence of university ratings, the purpose of Guardian rating, the operationalization and measurement of such concepts as satisfaction with teaching, feedback; ways to use statistics in education, data sources etc. with students. Ways of using this education data in group and individual work of students are suggested.

The article deals with the problem of strengthening the social dimension of higher education. It discusses the definition of social dimension, its indicators, models of student retention and student engagement. The article argues that students should act as active researchers of the topic of social dimension and present the ways to update the content of university courses for Sociology majors, such as "Mathematical and statistical methods of social information analysis", "Social statistics and demography", "Multivariate data analysis", "Structural equation modeling" and other courses for bachelors, master students, and PhDs in Sociology.

The article deals with the problem of using cloud technologies in the training of sociology students in Ukraine. The popularity of Twitter in Ukraine is analyzed. The possibilities of using Twitter as a learning tool in classroom are discussed. List of recommended tweeters, including Ukrainian resources as well as resources related to population censuses is proposed. The article offers examples of student activities for Social Statistics and Demographics courses. The article demonstrates that new forms of student’s activity related to data analysis introduced by academics and practitioners (building art objects and storytelling based on data; shared data collection by citizens through mobile devices, “play with data” modern data visualization services) can be realized with Twitter resources and can help overcome the barriers that arise while studying quantitative methods.

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