An organizer is a ‘bit of content’ : a working procedure, a problem, a systematic overview of contents, a process, a special cases, a poem, two different examples of the same thing (for example two different kidneys or two different papers)
It has two unique properties for the ‘teacher designer’. The first is that the organizer enables the teacher designer to ‘see’ how she or he is going to set up the learning experiences of the students in the course. This insight helps the teacher to make coherent decisions about the objectives, the contents, the learning track, the assignments, the learning methods and the test.
Secondly, if used in the course it gives the students a clear and correct insight into what they are going to learn and why. The organizer serves as an organizer and stimulator of students’ learning experiences. It
focusses the students on the main aims of a certain course.
- Some examples from Tony Earl and Jan Nedermeijer.
- Another interesting approach it the Advance organizer from Ausubel. A description can be found in the blog ‘**GUEST BLOG** Pre-Teaching: What and How?’ paragraph ‘Give students a framework to help better contextualise it’ in the website 3-Star learning experiences.
