Effects of Advance Organizers and Reader's Purpose on the Level of Ideas Acquired from Expository Text—Part II

1992 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas R. Williams ◽  
Earl C. Butterfield
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Expository Text ◽  
Text Processing ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Text Structure ◽  
Advance Organizers ◽  
Advance Organizer ◽  
Structural Level ◽  
Main Effect

Part I of this article, pp. 259–272, reviewed the relevant literature on advance organizers and suggested that methodological problems in previous advance organizer studies has not resolved the question of whether advance organizers facilitate the acquisition of subordinate information from text. This question is not an unimportant issue to technical communicators, whose readers often need to acquire factual information as well as more general concepts from the expository text they read. In two studies we investigated the influences of reader's background knowledge, advance organizers, relative importance of idea units, and idea units' position within a text structure on the recall of textual information. Subjects read introductory and text materials and subsequently were tested for their recognition of idea units that were structurally high and important, structurally high and unimportant, structurally low and important, or structurally low and unimportant. In the first study, forty-eight college students were randomly assigned to conditions consisting of relevant or irrelevant background, organizer or no organizer, and text or no text. There were significant main effects for having read a relevant text and for importance of idea units, and an interaction between structural level and importance. A significant organizer by text or no text interaction and absence of a significant main effect for the organizer indicated that the organizer influenced text processing rather than priming relevant prior knowledge, which is a previously undocumented requirement of advance organizer research. In the second study, conducted with eighty-eight college students, we substituted a purpose, no purpose condition for the text, no text condition of the first study. We observed a significant main effect for importance and a significant four-way interaction involving structure, importance, background, and organizer. The more relevant knowledge a reader had, the less dependent he or she was on text structure, and an advance organizer compensated for the absence of relevant prior knowledge.

Advance Organizers: A Review of the Research—Part I

1992 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas R. Williams ◽  
Earl C. Butterfield
Keyword(s):  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Expository Text ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Advance Organizers ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Information ◽  
Information Research ◽  
Meaningful Context ◽  
Methodological Problems

This article reviews previous research on advance organizers, introductory text adjuncts intended to provide the reader of expository text with a meaningful context within which to process unfamiliar, or difficult, new information. Research conducted during the past thirty years well documents the fact that advance organizers do, indeed, inspire significant increases in comprehension among readers whose prior knowledge “subsumers” are inadequate to provide a necessary assimilative context. One issue on which theorists yet disagree, however, is the efficacy of advance organizers in facilitating the acquisition of subordinate text detail, or facts. Definitional inconsistencies and methodological deficiencies in previous research have clouded this issue. Subsequently in this journal, Part II of this article will present the results of two empirical studies that resolve these methodological problems and specifically address the question of the effects of advance organizers on the acquisition of text detail.

Learning Disabled and Nondisabled College Students' Use of Structure in Recall of Stories and Text

1989 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen H. Bacon ◽  
Dale Carpenter
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Social Studies ◽  
Expository Text ◽  
Learning Disabled ◽  
Text Structure ◽  
Story Grammar ◽  
Story Structure ◽  
Support Research

This study compared LD and average college students' use of expository text structure and story grammar to recall social studies text passages. Students simultaneously read and listened to three passages with different structures: story grammar, comparison, and causation. Results were analyzed for structure use in immediate oral recall. No difference was found between the groups on the use of story grammar and comparison structure. However, the LD students scored significantly lower than their average peers on the causation structure. The results support research showing that LD students use story structure as well as nondisabled students and suggest that structure use is developmental, with use of comparison structures preceding use of causation.

scholarly journals Textual Organization, Advance Organizers and the Retention of Prose Material

1975 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary M. Schumacher ◽  
Dale Liebert ◽  
Warren Fass
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Advance Organizers ◽  
Advance Organizer ◽  
Levels Of Processing ◽  
Prose Passage ◽  
Textual Organization ◽  
Better Than

In order to study the interaction of passage structure and advance organizers a prose passage containing information about 6 obscure American Presidents was presented to 144 college students either in 1 long paragraph or 6 separate paragraphs. Half of the subjects in each condition were given an advance organizer describing the passage organization and half were not. Contrary to expectation, subjects given a passage with neither paragraph cues nor an advance organizer recalled better than subjects given paragraph cues but no advance organizer. Subjects given advance organizers were intermediate regardless of paragraph structure. Results were interpreted from an activity or levels of processing position.

scholarly journals Facilitating Children's Comprehension through the Use of Advance Organizers

1989 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. R. Townsend ◽  
Anne Clarihew
Keyword(s):  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Advance Organizers ◽  
Advance Organizer ◽  
Learner Characteristics ◽  
Science Topic ◽  
Knowledge Group ◽  
New Material ◽  
The Relationship

Recent investigations of Ausubel's advance organizer technique, a prereading instuctional intervention which serves to link new material with existing prior knowledge, have examined the interaction between learner characteristics and the characteristics of an advance organizer. However, this research fails to make eplicit the relationship between the advance organizer and the existing prior knowledge of the learner. The current study investigated the effects on comprehension of verbal and pictorial advance organizers with 8-year-old children having high or low prior knowledge relative to a science topic. In Experiment 1 a verbal advance organizer assisted the comprehension of only the children in the strong prior knowledge group. In Experiment 2 the addition of a pictorial component to the verbal advance organizer facilitated the comprehension of children in the weak prior knowledge group.

scholarly journals Awareness of Text Structure in Recognition and Production of Expository Discourse

1983 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 63-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elfrieda H. Hiebert ◽  
Carol Sue Englert ◽  
Sharon Brennan
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Expository Text ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Text Structure ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Structure Information ◽  
Text Structures ◽  
Expository Discourse ◽  
The Relationship

This study had three purposes in examining college students' awareness of four expository text structures. The first was to determine whether students were more aware of some text structures than of others in reading and writing. A second was to determine how performance on these text structure measures related to performance on a general comprehension measure. The third was to examine the relationship between awareness of these text structures in reading and writing. Fifty-two college students who were equally divided into two ability groups were given two tasks, one which assessed their awareness of the text structures in reading and the other which assessed awareness in writing. Findings related to the first aim indicated that awareness of the four text structures varied in both the recognition and production of relevant information. With respect to the second aim, performance on both recognition and production measures was related to performance on a general comprehension measure, with high-ability students more sensitive to intrusive information in the recognition task and more able to produce missing text structure information than low-ability students. Findings related to the final aim indicated that the relationship between recognition and production performances was moderate.

scholarly journals Using Analogical Problem Construction As An Advance Organizer To Teach Advanced Database (SQL) Nomenclature

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. Mills
Keyword(s):  
Instructional Design ◽  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Teaching Strategy ◽  
Advance Organizers ◽  
Advance Organizer ◽  
Formal Training ◽  
Business Faculty ◽  
Problem Construction ◽  
Analogical Problem ◽  
New Material

Although business faculty have an important teaching responsibility to prepare students for professional positions in industry, very few have any formal training in instructional design.  Analogical problem construction and advance organizers are powerful design techniques used to link prior knowledge to new material.  Unfortunately, the use of analogies as a formal teaching strategy is disappointingly low. This study examines the use of analogical problem constructions as an advance organizer strategy to teach advanced database (SQL) concepts.

College students' readiness for connectivist learning: the development and validation of a scale

2021 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-242
Author(s):  
Bulut Atay ◽  
Evren Sumuer
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Learning Environments ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Technology Enhanced Learning ◽  
Learning Networks ◽  
Good Reliability ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Readiness Level ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
Online Learning Readiness

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the components of college students' readiness for connectivist learning in technology-enhanced learning environments through the development of the readiness for connectivist learning scale (RCLS).Design/methodology/approachAfter the constructs of the scale had been identified, their items were created based on the relevant literature. In order to ensure the content validity of the items, a sorting procedure was implemented and they were reviewed by experts in the field. The construct validity of the scale was tested using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with data from 718 students from a university in Turkey.FindingsThe findings of the current study indicated a four-factor solution, which includes information and communication technology (ICT) self-efficacy (seven items), autonomous learning (seven items), information literacy (eight items) and learning networks (five items). A significant, strong and positive correlation of students' scores on the RCLS with those of the online learning readiness scale (Hung et al., 2010) supported the criterion-related validity of the scale. The value of Cronbach's alpha coefficients for the RCLS showed good reliability for the scale.Originality/valueWith the assessment of college students' readiness level for connectivist learning, it is possible for them to anticipate their success in connectivist learning environments themselves and thereby to improve the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary for their success in these environments.

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