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<< back to Creating Specialized Learning Materials
Designing Materials to Maximize the Learning Process
We can do much to facilitate learning by designing materials that help students to select, organize, integrate, and retrieve information. We can also facilitate higher-order thinking by designing materials that help students to monitor and evaluate their progress, and engage in critical thinking.
An excellent beginning for this study is the article by Richard H. Mayer entitled Designing Instruction for Constructivist Learning in Instructional-Design Theories and Models: A New Paradigm of Instructional Theory, Volume II, in our Learning Resource Centre. Here you will find very practical design tips specifically for helping learners to select, organize and integrate information presented texts, lectures and multimedia environments.
The links in the following sections also provide useful information:
Advance Organizers
Concept Maps
Scaffolding Learning
Self-Monitoring and Self-Evaluation
Stimulating Reflective Thinking
Advance Organizers
Creating and Using Advance Organizers for Distance Learninghttp://www.netnet.org/instructors/design/
goalsobjectives/advance.htm
This article from The Northeast Texas Consortium is an excellent introduction to advance organizers. It provides a six-step procedure for creating advance organizers and samples of advance organizers.
Advance Organizers and other approaches to structuring teaching
http://www.learningandteaching.info/teaching/
advance_organisers.htm
This is another good article from Teaching and Learning. It includes a link to more detailed information from Concordia University on advance organizers, including a brief introduction to the founder of the concept, David Ausubel.
Concept Maps
Concept maps are graphic forms of advance organizers. They may appeal more to your "right-brain" students, although we have found that they can be much appreciated by "left-brained" students as well.
Concept Maps
http://classes.aces.uiuc.edu/ACES100/Mind/CMap.html
This introduction to concept maps provides tips for creating concept maps, illustrations of different types of concept maps, and examples of concept maps. This site would be a good introduction to concept mapping for your students as well.
Graphic Organizers with UDL
http://www.cast.org/publications/ncac/ncac_goudl.html
Scroll down this article from CAST to see 13 different designs for graphic organizers. Also look at the section on the effectiveness of graphic organizers for enhancing learning.
The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How to
Construct Them
http://cmap.ihmc.us/Publications/ResearchPapers/TheoryCmaps/TheoryUnderlyingConceptMaps.htm
A very readable article, filled with illustrations, by Novak and Canãs. Joseph D. Novak is very well known for his work on concept mapping.
Concept Maps in Biology. This is an interesting collection of concept maps relating to a variety of biology topics; some of them have been transcribed into Chinese!
http://www.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/~johnson/misconceptions/
concept_map/concept_maps.html
Free Concept Mapping Tool
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Concept mapping is an excellent active learning strategy; it is in both of the lists presented above. Rudi Aksim has found a great free concept mapping tool.
Scaffolding Learning
Scaffolding learning involves incorporating tools, techniques and strategies into your learning materials that help students learn a concept and that help them to go go beyond what they could do on their own to understand complex ideas (Harry Tuttle).
Scaffolding for Success
http://fno.org/dec99/scaffold.html
This article by John McKenzie, is an excellent introduction to the concept of scaffolding learning. It identifies eight characteristics of educational scaffolding and provides links to examples of scaffolding.
Scaffolding
An interesting site that describes Vygotsky's "zone of proximal development" using a simple graphic, and then discusses the use of technology and mediation in scaffolding. Vygotsky's work forms the foundation for current work on educational scaffolding.
http://www.educ.utas.edu.au/users/ilwebb/Research/
scaffolding.htm
Scaffolding as a Teaching Strategy
http://condor.admin.ccny.cuny.edu/~group4/
Van%20Der%20Stuyf/Van%20Der%20Stuyf%20Paper.doc
This article by Rachel R. Van Der Stuyf provides a more comprehensive study on the technique, including a definition and description of the concept, related theory, theorists, and research, as well as a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of scaffolding.
Self-Monitoring and Self-Evaluation
Developing and practising self-monitoring and self-evaluation strategies are particularly important for the independent learner, whether that student is learning from print-based or electronic materials.
Teaching Students How to Learn
http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun00/howtolearn.html
This article by Bridgett Murray in the Monitor on Psychology, Volume 31, No. 6, June 2000, provides useful tips for college teachers to help their students become more self-regulated.
Fostering Self-regulation in Distributed Learning
http://www.senecac.on.ca/quarterly/
2006-vol09-num01-winter/terry_doolittle.html
Krista P. Terry, Ph.D., and Peter Doolittle, Ph.D. present in this article five strategies that can be used to foster self-regulation in online environments. These same strategies could be used in print materials designed for independent learning (College Quarterly, Winter, 2006).
More on Supporting Independent Learning
For more tools, techniques and strategies for supporting independent learning, see the material in the Using a Variety of Teaching and Learning Strategies section of this web site.
Stimulating Reflective Thinking
Promoting Reflective Thinking
This exhibit briefly describes the stages in Patricia King's reflective judgement model, including the characteristic assumptions of thinking in each stage, instructional goals for each stage, difficult tasks for students in each stage, and developmental assignments for students in each stage to help them move on to the next stage.
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