Differently structured advance organizers lead to different initial schemata and learning outcomes

Abstract

Does the specific structure of advance organizers influence learning outcomes? In the first experiment, 48 psychology students were randomly assigned to three differently structured advance organizers: a well-structured, a well-structured and key-concept emphasizing, and a less structured advance organizer. These were followed by a sorting task, a text study phase, and a posttest. The results indicated that differently structured advance organizers lead to different proto-schemata before and different learning outcomes after the text study phase. The second experiment replicated and extended these findings with 53 mathematics students. As in experiment 1, three differently structured advance organizers were used; but to rule out alternative explanations, the sorting task between the advance organizer and the text study phase was omitted. The results showed strong beneficial effects of well-structured advance organizers on near and far transfer tasks. Taken together, both experiments support the claim that the structure of advance organizers has an effect on preliminary schemata and learning outcomes. On a general level, the results indicate that advance organizers can support the generation of proto-schemata and thus can be more than the activation of ''existing'' concepts in long-term memory. With regard to education, this implies that educators should not only think about whether prior domainspecific knowledge is present, but also about how to scaffold the generation of protoschemata at the beginning of instruction.

Organized simultaneous displays facilitate learning of complex natural science categories

“…In particular, Gurlitt, Dummel, Schuster, and Nückles (2012) recently reported a study involving the use of Bstructured advance organizers.^Students were presented with structured displays of storylines for statistical analysis. In a well-structured display, each of three columns of the display pertained to cases in which a different statistical test was appropriate to analyzing the data, whereas each of two rows contained storylines with similar surface features.…”

“…Compared to a control group that used a less structured advance organizer, students provided with the well-structured organizer had better outcomes in understanding the conditions in which to apply the alternative statistical tests. Although the domains of inquiry are quite different, and the statistics problems of Gurlitt et al (2012) did not require the forms of joint highlevel and subtype-level generalization required for learning the present rock categories, it is important that future research identifies common psychological principles that may be operating in our related studies.…”

Helping preservice teachers with inaccurate and fragmentary prior knowledge to acquire conceptual understanding of psychological principles

“…Our approach may recall certain aspects of research on advance organizers (Ausubel, 1960;Gurlitt, Dummel, Schuster, & Nu¨ckles, 2012). On the one hand, advance organizers are very similar to our approach.…”

“….)'' (Corkill, 1992, p. 40;Gurlitt et al, 2012)-our refutational text elements can be taken as a kind of advance organizer (Sinatra & Broughton, 2011). Referring to this general definition, our effects can be interpreted as advance organizer effects.…”

Systems-Based Training in Graduate Medical Education for Service Learning in the State Legislature in the United States: Pilot Study

“…The LEAD course incorporated project-based learning to enhance the learner experience and cultivate competencies outside of the traditional classroom setting [ 10 , 11 ]. Advanced organizers, which have been shown time and again to reduce cognitive load by providing methodological scaffolding, were an important addition to the course [ 12 , 13 ]. However, the LEAD course’s key innovation was the incorporation of knowledge brokering: bringing health science professionals, state legislators, and other stakeholders together to facilitate knowledge interaction and intermediation in the service-based learning process [ 14 , 15 ].…”