UNIT 1-What are Advance Organizers and why do we use them?

Background Information

One of David Ausubel's greatest contributions is the Advance Organizer. In its simplest of terms, Advance Organizers are one of three tatics to activate prior knowledge, along with cues and questioning. They are used as a way for teachers to help their students make coonections between their prior knowledge and the new information and concepts to be taught.

According to Ausubel, the function of the advance organizer is "to provide ideational scaffolding for the stable incorporation and retention of more deteailed and differentiated material." Their main purpose is to influence cognitive processing in several ways, including but not limited to providing prerequisite knowledge or helping learners to make connections between incoming information and prior knowledge.

As educators and learners, we know and fully understand that the content being taught is not always learned. Instead, it is memorized (and typically stored in our short term memory). Advance organizers are a tool to enhance retention, as well as to promote transfer and life-long learning.

Definitions of Advance Organizers

1. An instructional unit that is used before direct instruction, or before a new topic; this is sometimes called a hook, set induction, or anticipatory set.

2. A model for helping students organize information by connecting it to a larger cognitive structure that reflects the organization of the discipline itself.

3. A visual, title, graph or question which presents a structure for the new material by relating it to the learner's existing knowledge.

4. Any information, such as an introduction, that tells readers what they’re about to read.

Advance organizers are...

- more effective when the learner lacks prior knowledge on the subject matter

- used to promote knnowledge transfer

- used as an organizational tool

- more efficient when used if the goal of instruction is the transfer of learning to new problems

How are Advance Organizers different from Graphic Organizers?

A graphic organizer is an example of an advance organizer if used in the proper manner. In order to be an advance organizer, a graphic organizer must be used prior to the lesson and somehow provide the information that students will be learning during direct instruction.

Unit 1 Activity

By the end of this course, you will be able to develop a lesson plan that focuses on the use of advance organizers. At this time, you will need to generate the topic of the lesson and determine how you will use the advance organizer to enhance learning.

Also, please take a close look at this example of a lesson plan that exemplifies the appropriate use of an advance organizer.

UNIT 2- What are some examples of advance organizers and how can they be used?

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