Organizing Content

Most of the content information can be divided into three categories:

• FACTS. Facts are "singular in occurrence, ... have occurred in the past or exist in the present, ... have no predictive value, and ... are acquired solely through the process of observation." (Paul Eggan, quoted in Joyce and Weil, Models of Thinking Prentice-Hall, 1986) Facts may be gathered through experiments or through retrieval of information from reliable sources (e.g., dictionaries, encyclopedias, and the like).

• CONCEPTS. Concepts are names given to the categories formed as a result of classifying factual data. To form concepts, learners attend to likenesses, ignore differences, and place similar objectives in the same category.

• GENERALIZATIONS. Statements that link two or more concepts are generalizations. Unlike facts, generalizations contain more than one element and are predictive. Consider the following:

  Nine of the ten students in the INLS 214 class used web sources in the reading assignment due today. Seven of the students used web sources in the reading assignment due last week. Eight of the students used web sources in the reading assignment due the week before that.

  These three statements are facts based on observation. We don't know anything about how the students found the web sources, whether they thought them valuable or not, or whether other students in the class learned about these sources. These are simply statements about what is observed.

  A majority of the students in the INLS 214 class use web sources in their reading assignments. This is a generalization based on the data from observatin and from our understanding of concepts like "web sources" and "reading assignments." We infer from observation that students find web sources useful and we can predict that they will use web sources in the next set of reading assignments.

  The inference and prediction are not necessarily true. They may be other explanations. Perhaps the instructor expressed a strong preference that web sources be included; perhaps the students had no access to a library but did have access to the net; perhaps students were unable to find appropriate sources in print materials. Only data from additional observations or interviews would prove the accuracy of the generalization.

  Because facts, concepts, and generalizations make up a large part of the instructional content, the teacher must select the most important combinations of these in the design process.

  • Which facts are most important?
  • Which facts are most accurate and relevant?
  • Which concepts are familiar to the students?
  • Which concepts need to be explained before students can understand the content?
  • How do students learn to infer and predict through forming generalizations?
  • How do they learn to test the reliability of facts and the accuracy of a generalization?

  

  Ordering Content

  David Ausubel, a cognitive psychologist, has written extensively in the field of learning psychology. Two of his principles of learning follow:
  • The single most important factor influencing new learning is what the learner already knows.

  • Any concept is explainable at many different levels of generality. The highest or most general level is most easily understood and the lowest or most specialized level is the most difficult.

  When organizing material for a lesson, these two principles will be useful.

  Breaking up a larger subject into units of study is one instructional activity almost all teachers engage it. Units provide a structure or framework for the design of a course. The plan for the series of units defines the course of study. Three aspects of unit design are useful to use:

  • Scope -- the breadth and range of content to be covered. There's always too much to cover and too little time. Choices of breadth and depth have to be made. Choices rest on two considerations:
    1. the relative importance of facts, concepts, and generalizations that might be taught in terms of the continuum of the overall curriculum

    2. the relative importance of the content with respect to the needs of the surrounding environment and the age, interests, and abilities of the learners.

  In general, learners retain more of what they understand than of why they try to memorize. It is less important to remember all the facts of a topic than it is for them to understand the main ideas and concepts.

• Focus -- what will be emphasized in the content. One way to bring focus is to title the units within a course. Titling and organizing units around particular themes or ideas adds interest and helps learners understand the purpose of the study.

• Sequence -- specifies the order in which the content will be arranged. Subjects may be ordered chronologically or thematically.