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Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne
An Advance Organizer for Student Learning: Choke Points and Pitfalls in
Studying
Stephen L. Chew
Online First Publication, June 17, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cap0000290
CITATION
Chew, S. L. (2021, June 17). An Advance Organizer for Student Learning: Choke Points and Pitfalls in Studying. Canadian
Psychology/Psychologie canadienne. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cap0000290
An Advance Organizer for Student Learning:
Choke Points and Pitfalls in Studying
Stephen L. Chew
Department of Psychology, Samford University
Both teachers and students benefit from an accurate understanding of how people learn, yet research
shows that both groups often hold mistaken beliefs that undermine student learning. This article de scribes
an advance organizer that can be used to help teachers understand how people learn and that teachers can
use in turn to train students how to study more effectively. The advance organizer is a graphical
representation of a simplified information-processing framework. It focuses on the choke points and
pitfalls of learning based on cognitive research. Choke points are constraints in the human cognitive
system, such as the selective nature of attention and the limited capacity of working memory, that impede
learning. Pitfalls are common traps students fall in that undermines their learning, such as multitasking
and overconfidence. The organizer describes each choke point and pitfall and provides a way of
addressing each of them.
Public Significance Statement
This article describes a graphical diagram which summarizes the factors that cognitive research indicates
are critical for effective learning. The diagram is intended to be an accessible guide for helping people to
improve their learning. The diagram outlines the challenges of learning and provides possible solutions
to each.
Keywords: teaching, pedagogy, student learning
Cognitive research has clearly delineated the superiority of some
learning strategies over others (Dunlosky et al., 2013), yet students
often use suboptimal strategies when they study (Blasiman et al.,
2017). Students can benefit from instruction in empirically sup-
ported study skills (e.g., Biwer et al., 2020;Brown-Kramer, 2021).
Therefore, teachers should not only teach the subject matter of a
course, but also effective learning strategies for retaining that
information (Chew, 2014;Rodriguez et al., 2018), especially in
introductory courses.
Teachers of psychology likely studied learning as part of their
training, which gives them an advantage over teachers in other
fields. That knowledge, however, will still vary in depth and
applicability to student learning. Furthermore, they may not have
received much training in how to teach in graduate school
(Chew et al., 2018). Teachers outside of psychology may not
have any knowledge of learning or pedagogical research. In fact,
studies find that teachers often lack an understanding of effective
learning strategies, and that belief in myths and misconceptions
about learning are common (Betts et al., 2019;Morehead et al.,
2016;Nuthall, 2007;Rodriguez et al., 2018). Teachers, then,
often lack the knowledge to teach students how to learn
effectively.
The problem of improving student learning strategies is two-
fold. First, students need to be instructed in effective study skills,
either as part of a course or as a general set of skills independent of
a particular course context (Chew, 2014,2020a). Ideally, students
should receive instruction on study strategies in both ways.
Second, teachers need to be instructed in effective learning
strategies so they can pass on and reinforce those skills in their
students as well as use the knowledge to teach more effectively. It
would be counterproductive to teach students effective learning
strategies who are then taught by teachers who endorse learning
myths, such as learning styles. Even when students know about
effective study strategies, they may not employ them for a variety
of reasons (Blasiman et al., 2017;Karpicke et al., 2009). Teachers
can help by modeling the use of effective learning techniques,
such as utilizing feedback effectively and self-assessment, as part
of teaching.
Academic learning is both complex and counterintuitive. There
is no universal best method of learning. Rather the best approach
depends on the interaction of a myriad of factors including
cognitive processes such as attention, working memory, and
executive function; the prior knowledge of the student; the
concept to be learned and how it is being presented; the learning
strategies employed by the student; and the method used to assess
the level of learning (Chew & Cerbin, 2021). Learning can go
awry in multiple places and in multiple ways. Explaining how
people learn to teachers and students in such a way that both
Stephen L. Chew https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5951-6680
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Stephen
L. Chew, Department of Psychology, Samford University, 800 Lakeshore
Dr, Birmingham, AL 35229, United States. Email: slchew@samford.edu
Canadian Psychology / Psychologie canadienne
ISSN: 0708-5591
© 2021 Canadian Psychological Association https://doi.org/10.1037/cap0000290
1
groups can use the knowledge to improve study habits is a
challenging undertaking.
Despite the research showing the complexity of learning, students
and teachers often hold simplistic, flawed understandings of how
students learn. Students often select the easiest method of study,
generally mindless re-reading, and focus on the amount of study
rather than quality of study (Blasiman et al., 2017;Chew, 2014).
Many teachers assume that their responsibility for student learning
ends at presenting accurate, up-to-date information in a clear,
organized fashion, when research clearly shows that they can
have a great deal of influence, both positive and negative, on
whether students learn and what they learn (Chew et al., 2018).
When students struggle, teachers rely on their own understanding of
how people learn to try to help. If their understanding is flawed, they
may give the students incorrect advice or vague, unhelpful advice
such as “study harder.”
Cognitive researchers and educators have written books to help
students and teachers understand the nature of learning. Some
recent examples are Agarwal and Bain (2019),Benassi et al.
(2014),Cavanagh (2016),Penn (2019),Weinstein et al. (2019),
and Willingham, (2009). One book was intentionally written by
cognitive scientists in collaboration with a novelist to minimize
technical jargon and enhance readability (Brown et al., 2014).
Hattie (2009) wrote an extensive review of factors associated
with student achievement and then wrote a book covering the
same factors specifically for teachers (Hattie, 2012). Faculty in
various fields who study teaching have also contributed books, such
as McGuire (2015) and Eyler (2018). A lot of the books focus
primarily on one aspect of the student learning context, such as
learning strategies (Agarwal & Bain, 2019;Brown et al., 2014)or
metacognition (McGuire, 2015). Resources that provide a compre-
hensive overview of all the factors in the learning situation (e.g.,
Weinstein et al., 2019;Willingham, 2009) contain a lot of informa-
tion, and they tend to present it as a sequence of factors instead of as
a coherent framework.
Cognitive scientists and education researchers have also written
articles on how to study effectively based on cognitive principles at
various levels of technical complexity. For example, Dunlosky et al.
(2013) conducted an extensive review of learning research and
specified the effectiveness of popular study strategies. Dunlosky
then wrote a more accessible version of that review for K-12
teachers for the American Educator (Dunlosky, 2013). Putnam
et al. (2016) and Miyatsu et al. (2018) wrote articles whose specific
purpose was to translate research into an accessible form for teachers
and students. One issue with these written resources is that they do
not provide the student with a coherent framework that encompasses
the key aspects of learning to help students understand and apply the
information to help them study.
There are websites maintained by cognitive researchers and edu-
cators, such as the Learning Scientists (www.learningscientists.org),
Learning Sciences in Canada (https://www.canadianlearningsciences
.ca/home), Taking Learning Seriously (www.takinglearningseriously
.com) and The K. Patricia Cross Academy (www.kpcrossacademy
.org). Many universities maintain teaching and learning centers to
provide evidence-based information to help teachers, such as the
University of British Columbia Centre for Teaching, Learning, and
Technology (https://ctlt.ubc.ca/). Mount Royal University houses
the Institute for Scholarship in Teaching and Learning, dedicated
to pedagogical research. (https://www.mtroyal.ca/ProgramsCourses/
FacultiesSchoolsCentres/InstituteforScholarshipofTeachingLearning/
index.htm). There are numerous teaching focused blogs (e.g., Online
Learning and Distance Education Resources,foundathttps://www
.tonybates.ca/) as well as podcasts (e.g., Teaching Strides,found
at http://www.teachingstrides.ca/). Finally, many organizations, re-
searchers, and teachers are active on various social media platforms.
Several psychologists have created videos by on how to study
effectively based on cognitive principles. Chew (2011,2015), for
example, offers a series of five relatively brief videos for students
that cover the cognitive basis of effective learning strategies, and
another series of videos for teachers explaining the cognitive
principles of effective teaching.
None of the materials developed thus far provide the reader with a
single, comprehensive framework or diagram that clearly and accu-
rately illustrates how students learn in a way that will help students
learn more effectively. There are tables and lists of effective practices,
but not a comprehensive graphical representation. Ideally, such a
graphical framework would provide students and teachers with a
schema for learning that would help teachers design and implement
effective pedagogy and students to develop effective study strategies.
A Schema for How People Learn
A schema is an organized framework of long-term knowledge
that, when activated, facilitates the encoding and learning of new,
related concepts; promotes inference, reasoning, and problem solv-
ing within that domain; and guides recall of relevant information
(Alba & Hasher, 1983;Bransford & Johnson, 1972;Chen & Mo,
2004;Mannies et al., 1989). Taking individual facts and creating a
coherent schema, a process called schematization, has profound
effects on the long-term recall and utility of the information (Alba &
Hasher, 1983;Herbert & Burt, 2004). Teachers who have developed
an accurate schema of learning can design and implement pedagogy
to fit a particular educational context, diagnose problems and
make any needed adjustments, and design meaningful assessments
(Willingham, 2017). Students with an accurate schema of learning
can develop effective learning strategies for any course context,
identify and avoid bad study strategies, and regulate their learning
(Chew, 2020a,Pan & Bjork, 2020). Clearly, both teachers and
students benefit when they possess a valid schema of how people
learn, and helping both groups develop such a schema should be a
priority. Unfortunately, much of the advice offered to these groups
comes in the form of decontextualized, stand alone “tips”that often
focus more on behavior than cognitive principle (Chew, 2020a;
Chew & Cerbin, 2021) Teachers get teaching tips such as “provide
feedback to students”without being told how to formulate feedback
to help student learning. Students get study tips such as “don’t cram”
without knowing why that is bad for long-term learning.
What is the fastest, easiest way for a novice to create an accurate
schema of new information? Schema formation can be rapid in areas
where students have rich background knowledge. One good exam-
ple is enough to create a functional schema (Ahn et al., 1992). By
the time they get to college, students have a lot of experience with
studying, even if they may not do it well. Certainly, teachers have
relevant background knowledge. Thus, we can expect that one good
example or illustration may be sufficient for students and teachers to
create a schema for learning.
The goal of this article is to create a graphical advance organizer
based on cognitive research that will help both students and teachers
2CHEW
develop a schematic understanding of the complex nature of learn-
ing. The organizer should assist teachers in creating supportive
learning environments. It should provide a coherent schematic
framework to help students understand how people learn and
help them plan and carry out effective study strategies. This diagram
would also help teachers understand how people learn and be a tool
for them to explain this information to students. The challenge is
summarizing and translating the research into an understandable and
useful form for teachers and students.
Advance or Graphic Organizers
Ausubel (1960) introduced the idea of using advance organizers
to help students learn. Advance organizers present a coherent
overview of the relationships among the concepts to be learned.
It should provide a schematic framework with proximally superor-
dinate categories that subsume the concepts. The advance organizer
is shown to students before the concepts are presented.
A well-designed advance organizer should be inclusive of all
concepts needed to achieve the learning goal, showing both the
necessary depth and breadth of the material. An advance organizer
can take multiple forms, but it should be easy to understand, both in
terms of the concepts and the relationships among the concepts.
Advance organizers can be composed of written text (Corkill, 1992),
but graphic diagrams or concept maps are a commonly used format,
and there is evidence that they are superior to text-based advance
organizers for learning (Robinson & Kiewra, 1995).
The use of a well-designed advance organizer can significantly
enhance learning (Mayer, 1979;Stone, 1983). Stull and Mayer
(2007) found that providing students with advance organizers was
more effective than having students generate their own. They tested
the impact of advance organizers on learning low, medium, or high
complexity information. They found no difference in recall of
information with the use of advance organizers, but they found
significantly better transfer of information with the use of advance
organizers at all levels of information complexity.
An Advance Organizer for Student Learning:
Choke Points and Pitfalls in Learning
In this section, I discuss the development of a comprehensive,
graphical advance organizer based on the Information Processing
Model that includes components of the model relevant for academic
learning, but translated into a form that is accessible and usable by
teachers and students. Slate and Charlesworth (1988) first suggested
using the information processing model as the basis of as an advance
organizer for improving teaching and learning but their organizer
was text-based, and it omitted several processes relevant to learning.
To design a graphical advance organizer, I started with an updated
information processing model that included Working Memory
(WM) instead of short-term memory. I also included learning
strategies for transferring information to long-term memory such
as self-testing and deep processing. I chose to omit cognitive
concepts that are not directly relevant to academic learning, such
as sensory memory, pattern recognition, and implicit forms of
memory. To include these concepts would make the advance
organizer harder for students to understand and obscure the relevant
information (Mayer, 2014). Next, I decided on a level of granularity
for the advance organizer that would convey the essential properties
of a cognitive process for learning without going into unneeded
detail. For example, I discuss Working Memory in terms of its
function, but I do not discuss the episodic buffer, phonological loop,
and visual-spatial sketchpad. I did include chunking because it is
directly relevant to student learning.
A critical factor for the effectiveness of the advance organizer was
to translate cognitive research and theory into a form that is both
accessible and useable by students and teachers (Daniel & Chew,
2013;Willingham, 2017). Neither teachers nor students need to
have a detailed understanding of psychological theories or a techni-
cal grasp of research findings. They simply need a general, func-
tional understanding, supported by research, that can help them
teach and learn more effectively. For example, it isn’t necessary for
students and teachers to understand the new theory of disuse (Bjork &
Bjork, 2006) and the research that supports it. In most circumstances,
teachers and students only need to understand a general principle that
is supported by the theory (Willingham, 2017). If they know that
forgetting and then relearning information strengthens long-term
recall, then they can utilize strategies such as spaced practice,
interleaving, and delayed feedback. To make the advance organizer
accessible, I introduced the categories of chokepoints and pitfalls, to
capture cognitive constraints that limit learning and common student
missteps in learning, respectively.
The final challenge in designing the advance organizer was
creating a graphical illustration using the principles of effective
multimedia learning. Following the guidelines of Mayer (2014),
I minimized extraneous material that did not bear on the learning
goal (coherence), highlighted important relationships within the
diagram (signaling), and embedded captions in the relevant parts
of the diagram (spatial contiguity).
The resulting advance organizer for student learning is shown in
Figure 1. It is based on a simplified information-processing model
with three stages of memory: sensory memory, working memory,
and long-term memory. It also depicts attention and elaborative
rehearsal. The linear progression of stages is intentional as a visual
metaphor. Sherrington (2020) has proposed an alternative, non-
linear graphical framework of learning, also based on information
processing.
In bottom-up processing, information flows into the system
through the senses on the left and arrives at sensory memory.
Sensory memory holds incoming sensory information for a brief
time. Information then goes through attention, which serves two
functions. It selects information for further processing, essentially
filtering out any non-attended information, and it allows students to
concentrate on important stimuli such as an exam. At this point,
information can flow either way in the system. Information that
makes it through attention then arrives at working memory (WM).
Working memory is conscious and has a limited capacity. In WM, if
information is not rehearsed, it is forgotten in seconds. Information
in working memory can be rehearsed in different ways, and
elaborative rehearsal is the most efficient way of making informa-
tion permanent by transferring it to long-term memory (LTM).
Elaborative rehearsal can be achieved in multiple ways, such as
semantic processing, spaced rehearsal, or retrieval practice. LTM is
the permanent storehouse of knowledge. It is unlimited in capacity;
but in order to recall information, students have to have an effective
retrieval strategy. Information can still be forgotten through retrieval
failure. Students who lack an effective retrieval strategy cannot
recall information even though it is in LTM.
CHOKE POINTS AND PITFALLS 3
Choke Points and Pitfalls
The advance organizer points out the common choke points and
pitfalls that undermine the effectiveness of their studying. A choke
point is a limitation or constraint in the cognitive system that
students must cope with in order to learn, such as the limited ability
of WM to hold information. A pitfall is a common error students
make when studying. These pitfalls are often due to faulty assump-
tions and intuitions about how people learn.
Choke Points
Here are the common choke points for learning that students and
teachers need to know. Each choke point is labeled on the advance
organizer along with a means of obviating the constraint.
In attention, mental effort or concentration is a limited resource,
and thus a major constraint on learning. Students have a limited
amount of concentration that they can use at any given time
(Chandler & Sweller, 1991;Sweller et al., 2019). A task requires
a certain amount of mental effort to complete, which is called its
cognitive load. Students can easily be overwhelmed when the
cognitive load of a task or the combined cognitive load of a set
of tasks they are trying to complete exceeds their available mental
effort. If the cognitive load exceeds available mental effort, then
students will be overwhelmed and their learning performance will
decline. Cognitive load is high when students are trying to learn
new, complex information (e.g., Piolat et al., 2005). Distractions
that take up mental effort are harmful to learning because learning
new information has a high cognitive load (Forster, 2013). Students
can solve the mental effort choke point through deliberate practice
and automaticity. The more students practice and use information,
the less mental effort is needed to recall and use the information
(Feldon, 2007). Students should aim to make new knowledge
automatic, which means overlearning the information, studying it
well beyond an initial ability to recall the information. Short of
automaticity, students can try to structure their study environment to
reduce distraction and avoid becoming overwhelmed.
In attention, the narrow focus of attention forms another choke
point. Selective attention allows a person to focus their awareness on
a specific stimulus. By doing so, they lose the ability to perceive
stimuli outside their focus (Kreitz et al., 2015). This fact makes
students vulnerable to distraction, especially by stimuli that are more
eye-catching and potentially interesting that what is going on in
class or during a study session. Blasiman et al. (2018) documented
the negative impact of different kinds of distraction during online
learning. When we try to divide attention between different sources,
commonly called multitasking, our ability to perceive either source
falters. Multitasking is one of the pitfalls I will discuss later. The
simplest way to address selective attention is to reduce or eliminate
distractions (Ent et al., 2015). Students should reduce the number of
distractions in their study environment. The mere presence of a
smartphone might reduce the ability to concentrate and learn
(Thornton et al., 2014). Furthermore, they should develop study
habits that involve the reduction and avoidance of distractions (Neal
et al., 2013). The human cognitive system is designed to focus on
one stimulus at a time.
Figure 1
The Choke Points and Pitfalls in Learning, With Possible Solutions
Note. An advance organizer illustrating the choke points and pitfalls of student learning within an information processing model. See the online article for
the color version of this figure.
4CHEW
Working memory, which has a limited capacity to hold informa-
tion, is another major choke point. WM is the only memory with a
capacity limit, making it and attention the two main constraints on
learning. The capacity limit of WM is severe, roughly four chunks of
information (Cowan, 2010). Because WM is conscious, it is the
cause of frustration of many students as the try to repeatedly rehearse
information in an attempt to get it through WM to long-term
memory. Students try to overcome the WM capacity limit through
concentration and repetition, but this is the wrong way to overcome
this bottleneck. We measure WM capacity in terms of chunks.
A chunk is composed of organized, coherent information so that it
acts as a single unit in WM. The solution to the capacity limit in WM
is to organize information into large chunks, a process called
chunking (Gobet, 2005). For example, memorizing a random string
of letters, such as “P-T-M-A-O-P-I-H-O-S-U-P”would be difficult
because each letter acts as a chunk and 12 chunks far exceed WM
capacity. However, memorizing the same string of letters arranged
to spell a familiar word, such as “H-I-P-P-O-P-O-T-A-M-U-S is
easy because now all the letters are organized by long-term knowl-
edge into something familiar and meaningful. To overcome the WM
capacity limit, students need to study to organize information into
meaningful chunks. This is most difficult for novice learners in
introductory classes because they lack the expertise to build big
chunks. As a result many students find introductory courses to be
much more challenging that advanced ones.
The rapidity of forgetting forms the last choke point. In WM,
forgetting occurs in a matter of seconds without rehearsal. For-
getting in LTM occurs at different rates depending on conditions.
Forgetting generally occurs due to interference from other memories
(Weinstein et al., 2019). Forgetting in general is more rapid than
learning, which is why it is so frustrating. To slow down forgetting,
students can overlearn information, which leads to stronger initial
learning (Rose, 1992). Forgetting still occurs, but the stronger initial
learning means that the memory lasts longer. Overlearning through
the use of retrieval practice may help reduce the effects of interfer-
ence (Kliegl & Bäuml, 2016), which makes practicing recall under
test conditions a good way to learn. Another way to reduce
interference is to create a highly distinctive memory that stands
out against other memories (Mäntylä & Nilsson, 1988).
Pitfalls
Here are common pitfalls, or missteps, that students often make
that undermine their learning. For each pitfall, the advance organizer
indicates a way for students to avoid it.
Students try to study while multitasking or in the presence of
distractions, which greatly reduces learning (Weinstein et al.,
2019). The human cognitive system is not built to multitask, but to
focus on one stimulus at a time. Multitasking, also called task
switching, involves trying to attend to more than one activity at the
same time. It is a huge problem with the plethora of digital distractions
that surround us, especially for students trying to concentrate and learn
(Wammes et al., 2019). The clear conclusion from a large body of
research is that multitasking reduces learning and hurts academic
achievement (e.g., Bellur et al., 2015). Students may feel like they are
good at multitasking because they do it often, but the belief is
mistaken. The human cognitive system is not built to multitask, but
to focus on one stimulus at a time. People probably can carry out two
automatic tasks at once, but studying generally involves an effortful
attempt to learn complex unfamiliar information. Avoiding the prob-
lem of multitasking is not a matter of willpower, but of removing the
distractions from the environment (Ent et al., 2015). Students should
reduce the number of distractions in their study environment. Further-
more, they should develop study habits that involve the reduction and
avoidance of distractions (Neal et al., 2013).
Another pitfall is that students often prefer the least effective study
strategies for long-term learning. Students can employ different
rehearsal or learning strategies on information in WM. Some of the
rehearsal strategies only keep information current in WM. Once this
kind of rehearsal stops, forgetting is rapid. To make information
permanent, students have to use a study strategy that will transfer
information from WM to LTM. Students need to use the proper kind
of rehearsal to match their study goal. Students however, strongly
prefer to use the least effective learning strategies for long-term
learning (Blasiman et al., 2017;Yue, 2020), such as mindless re-
reading, massed practice, and highlighting. These methods tend to
be easy to do. Learning strategies that are effective at creating
enduring memories are more effortful and usually involve some
kind of meaningful elaboration or manipulation (Weinstein et al.,
2019). On the advance organizer, I have used the category label
elaborative rehearsal (Craik & Watkins, 1973) but there are a wide
range of effective study strategies, such as chunking, spaced prac-
tice, retrieval practice, interleaving, and self-testing among others
(Weinstein et al., 2019).
Another pitfall is that students are often overconfident when
judging their level of understanding. Students tend to be overconfi-
dent in judging their own level of understanding, especially weaker
students (Ehrlinger & Shain, 2014;Yue, 2020). Overconfidence
causes students to stop studying prematurely, believing they have
deep understanding when in fact their knowledge is shallow,
incomplete, and has misconceptions. Poor study strategies can
lead to overconfidence because the student has put in long hours
of study with little actual learning. Overconfidence is most likely to
occur in introductory courses in which students have less knowledge
about a field and thus are poor judges of their level of understanding
(Guillory & Blankson, 2017). Yue (2020) makes several sugges-
tions about how to reduce overconfidence and improve metacogni-
tion. These include providing multiple opportunities for students to
gain feedback about their level of understanding and having students
reflect on that feedback, modeling metacognitive strategies for
students, use retrieval practice in the classroom, and teaching
students how to use self-testing appropriately.
Assessing the Advance Organizer
Even though the advance organizer may accurately reflect cogni-
tive research, it is useless unless teachers and students can under-
stand it and use it. I tested the utility, accuracy, and appeal of the
advance organizer by getting feedback about it from teachers across
many disciplines I posted a draft version of the organizer on different
social media sites that are frequented by educators and educational
researchers, and asked for honest, critical feedback. Although
I could have created a formal survey, this method provides unfet-
tered feedback from the group for which the advance organizer was
designed. Their feedback was in the form of likes, shares or retweets,
and comments.
I posted the advance organizer on my Twitter and Facebook
accounts and asked for feedback. My Twitter account is primarily
CHOKE POINTS AND PITFALLS 5
dedicated to teaching, pedagogy, and the scholarship of teaching and
learning. It has about 3100 followers, most of whom are educators
and education researchers in a variety of fields, roles, and levels.
I also posted the advance organizer on the Facebook group of the
Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP). The STP group has
over 16,000 members. Presumably, the vast majority of these
members are teachers or prospective teachers of psychology at
various stages of their careers and in a wide variety of settings.
Finally, I created a video on how people learn which used the
advance organizer as a centerpiece, and posted it on YouTube
(Chew, 2020b). I publicized the video on Twitter and Facebook.
According to analytics, the Twitter post was seen by over 40,000
people, of which 3117 opened the tweet. Overall, the post received 335
likes and 101 retweets, 12 of which were positive quote retweets. The
tweet received 22 comments, which were overwhelmingly positive
and supportive. Several people made suggestions that resulted in
modifications to the advance organizer, such as enclosing “attention”
in a rectangle, adding the caption “elaborative rehearsal”between WM
and LTM, and changing forgetting from a pitfall to a choke point.
There is not a comparison group for evaluating these results, but
compared to other tweets about pedagogy, the advance organizer was
well received both in terms of positive responses and sharing.
The Facebook post containing the advance organizer received 130
likes and 16 shares. It received nine unique comments, all of which were
strongly positive. Compared to other posts in the group, the advance
organizer received a great deal of attention and positive feedback.
The YouTube video using the advance organizer was posted in
July, 2020. In 6 months, it has been viewed over 12,000 times. The
comments from teachers have been uniformly positive. The video
has been used by high school and college teachers to show students
how to study. I posted notices about the video on both Twitter and
the STP Facebook group, welcoming critical feedback. The Face-
book post received 124 likes and was shared 30 times. There were
18 comments which were strongly positive.
Summary and Conclusion
Effective teaching involves more than just instructing students in
course content. It also involves teaching students how to learn, think
about, and use the information (Chew, 2014). Furthermore, teachers
of psychology have the unique opportunity to teach students effec-
tive study skills as part of a class. In this article, I have described the
development of a graphic advance organizer to help with this goal.
The purpose of this advance organizer is to help teachers understand
learning, and to enable them to design better pedagogy and instruct
students in how to study effectively. For students, the organizer is
intended to help them avoid common pitfalls in learning and develop
flexible, effective study skills that they can use in any learning
situation. The organizer graphically represents the course of learn-
ing, pointing out the choke points and pitfalls that might undermine
learning. Not only does it point out these potential problems, but it
also supplies solutions.
To test the accuracy and usefulness of the advance organizer,
I posted it on several social media sites where it would be seen by
teachers of psychology specifically and teachers in general, as well as
other educational professionals. While not a controlled study, the
hypothesis that the advance organizer was a valid and useful learning
tool could have been falsified by critical comments or teacher indiffer-
ence. The results show that the advance organizer was viewed
positively and enthusiastically. Obviously, the lack of controlled testing
is a limitation, although the fact that teachers were free to choose to
criticize, ignore, or respond positively, and the majority did the latter.
More extensive research should be done with the advance organizer
and, if warranted by the results, modifications made. For example,
three groups of first-year college students could be given the same
presentation on how to study effectively, with one group being given
the advance organizer beforehand, another group getting the same
information as the advance organizer but in list form rather than
graphical form, and a control group not given any form of organizer.
The students could be assessed on how much they learned from the
presentation, how they planned to incorporate the information into their
study strategies, and how useful the advance organizer that the first two
groups received. Another way to assess the impact of the advance
organizer would be to follow the paradigm used by Bransford and
Johnson (1972) for testing schema activation. Three groups of first-
year students could be given the same presentation on how to study, but
one group would be provided with the advance organizer before the
presentation, a second group would be provided with the advance
organizer only after the presentation, and the third group would not be
provided with the advance organizer at all. This study would use the
same dependent measures as the previous one. In either study, it would
be useful to follow up with the students after a time period to see how
well students retained and used the information, and to see if either
advance organizer could act as a reminder of the information.
Previous attempts to instruct teachers and students in how people
learn have taken the form of books, articles, and video presentations.
This advance organizer is unique in that it contains highly relevant
information in one instructive diagram that can be used by both
teachers and students. It has the potential to help teachers and
students to develop a schema of how people learn.
Résumé
Les enseignants et les élèves ont tout à gagner d’une compréhension
précise de la façon dont les gens apprennent. Pourtant, les recher-
ches montrent que les deux groupes ont souvent des croyances
erronées qui nuisent à l’apprentissage des élèves. Cet article décrit
un organisateur avancé qui peut être utilisé pour aider les ensei-
gnants à comprendre comment les gens apprennent et que les
enseignants peuvent utiliser à leur tour pour former les élèves à
étudier plus efficacement. L’organisateur avancé est une représen-
tation graphique d’un cadre simplifié de traitement de l’information.
Il se concentre sur les goulots d’étranglement et les écueils de
l’apprentissage, sur la base de la recherche cognitive. Les goulots
d’étranglement sont des contraintes du système cognitif humain,
comme la nature sélective de l’attention et la capacité limitée de la
mémoire de travail, qui entravent l’apprentissage. Les écueils sont
des pièges courants dans lesquels les élèves tombent et qui nuisent à
leur apprentissage, comme le multitâche et l’excès de confiance.
L’organisateur décrit chaque goulot d’étranglement et chaque écueil
et propose une façon d’aborder chacun d’entre eux.
Mots-clés : enseignement, pédagogie, apprentissage des élèves
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Received July 2, 2020
Revision received March 20, 2021
Accepted March 28, 2021 ▪
8CHEW
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