College students enrolled in an introductory French course viewed 12 French-language videos, with 1 group exposed to oral descriptions and pictures from the videos before viewing and a second group exposed to only oral descriptions. Students in the description-plus-pictures group demonstrated higher levels of comprehension than students in the…

A study of the relative effectiveness of an introductory activity to teach intracoronal operative preparations to dental students (n=35) found that in comparison with traditional classroom methods used with 29 students, the leadup activity resulted in more efficient instruction and improved learning. Amount of teacher supervision was also a…

In this study, the effects of previewing on children's (N=87) comprehension of a televised story were investigated. Results indicate that previewing may be an effective mediational technique for enhancing children's comprehension and retention of plot-essential information from a televised story. (Author/IAH)

Middle school students (N=35) who read and paraphrased an advance organizer prior to study, correctly answered significantly more lower-order study questions than did students not encountering the organizer. Middle school (N=26) and college (N=30) students who read and paraphrased the advance organizer constructed significantly better answers for…

In 2 experiments involving a total of 43 college students, adages (relational metaphors) were found to facilitate processing of general ideas and higher-order principles. The higher the degree of structural relations embedded in the titles of passages, the greater the recall and accessibility of system-related ideas. (SLD)

Maintains that students will learn history better if it is presented as a historic narrative. Presents an example where the students first are given an advanced organizer on Reconstruction and then two primary documents by David Golightly Harris and Henry Adams. Describes the process of sourcing the document, corroborating evidence, and…

Research literature pertaining to the use of instructional organizers is reviewed, and a comparative analysis is made of their effectiveness with computer-based instruction (CBI). One of the earliest forms of instructional organizer is the advance organizer, first proposed by David Ausubel (1960, 1963) which is meant to facilitate the retention of…

This study compared the use of three instructional organizers--the advance organizer (AO), the participatory pictorial graphic organizer (PGO), and the final form pictorial graphic organizer (FGO)--in the design and use of computer-based interactive video (CBIV) programs. That is, it attempted to determine whether a less generative or more…

This study examined the efficacy of Judith Langer's PreReading Plan (PReP) with Hispanic and other high school students. Specifically, the study investigated (1) the effect the PReP has on learning when used with predominantly Anglo and Hispanic high school students in conjunction with a social studies textbook reading assignment; (2) whether…

This experiment examined the effects of headings and adjunct questions embedded in expository text on the delayed multiple-choice test performance of college students. Subjects in the headings-present group performed significantly better on the retention test than did the subjects in the headings-absent group. The main effect of adjunct questions…

Two assessment endeavors were undertaken to determine the relative impact of alphanumeric and graphic instructional mediators upon intentional and incidental learning outcomes in applied instructional contexts. The intent of these investigations was to determine the feasibility of embedding strategic organizational cues within instruction to…

Communications satellites transmit live interactive television broadcasts from a host site classroom to small and geographically isolated rural high schools. Using the research on effective teaching practices, this study examined the effectiveness of instruction delivered by satellite. Researchers observed 15 hours of three courses (Computer…

A study examined the differential effects of previewing textual information with questions containing higher-order versus lower-order information. The 104 college students in the study read three passages, each of which was preceded by different combinations of questions about information high or low in the structural hierarchy of the text, then…

The functions of blocking text with horizontal rules and providing headings of different types are discussed. Headings may be encoded or function as access structures, while blocking segments text and provides retrieval cues. These issues were tested in two experiments. College students read a 2000-word passage. In the first experiment, no…

A study investigated the effectiveness of using thematic organizers to increase the reading comprehension of poor readers. The thematic organizer was used to expand the readers' prior knowledge by defining the implied thematic concept and presenting relevant examples of that concept. Twenty-four fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students who had been…