Effects of advance organizers and repeated presentations on students' learning

An experiment was conducted to examine the effects of advance organizers and repeating a lecture on test performance. Participants viewed a videotaped lecture about the process of radar once, twice, or three times. Before each viewing, they studied one of three different advance organizers—a conventional organizer that summarized the main steps of the radar process as a list, a linear organizer that summarized the steps and subordinate information in outline form, and a matrix organizer that summarized the steps and subordinate information in matrix form. Repeated presentations of the lecture increased note taking, recognition of isolated facts, and overall recall to some degree. Advance organizers had a test-appropriate effect The advance organizers that integrated subtopic information (linear and matrix) increased recall of subtopic information, whereas the more general organizer (conventional) aided overall recall, especially general topic information. No performance differences were observed between students studying linear or matrix organizers despite the latter's computational advantages (Larkin & Simon, 1987). More sensitive tests may be necessary to detect these advantages.