What Is an Advance Organizer?
An advance organizer is “An umbrella statement that provides a conceptual link between the learner’s existing knowledge and the new learning (Bell-Gredler, 1986, p. 186). For example, an instructor could use visual overviews such as graphs or charts to summarize a new lesson’s major stages to give students a general idea of what will be covered.
Types of Advance Organizers
There are two types of advance organizers: comparative and expository (Reigeluth, 1983). A comparative organizer is used when the instructor is aware that students have relevant prior knowledge of the new content. The expository organizer, on the other hand, is applied when the students lack relevant prior learning. In such a situation, the instructor would provide students with a knowledge base to help them process the new content.
Importance of Advance Organizers
According to a review of research by Bell-Gradler (1986), advance organizers are effective in teaching. “They result in broader learning in situations in which the learner (1) perceives the material to be unorganized or unfamiliar, (2) lacks a rich set of related information or skills, (3) receives a higher-level context of learning, and (4) is tested on the ability to transfer the new learning to other tasks.” (p. 173).
How to Implement Advance Organizers
Most of the advance organizers can be applied to teaching in the form of visual aids or graphic representations such as charts, tables, or diagrams (Scholl, 2023, para. 16). For example, they can be used to compare and contrast learning content, show relationships, and organize content into categories. Instructors should first try to identify what students already know by asking a few questions before presenting new content. Examples of advance organizers include:
- Venn diagrams
- Worksheets
- flow charts
- tree diagrams
References
Bell-Gradler, M. E. (1986). Learning and instruction – theory into practice. Macmillan.
Reigeluth, M. C. (Ed.). (1983). Instructional-design theories and models: an overview of their current
status. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Scholl, A. (2023, February 20). 10 Effective Ways to Teach Visual Learners. SplashLearn.
https://www.splashlearn.com/blog/empower-visual-learners-with-actionable-strategies-in-school-home/