An organiser is a ‘bit of content’: a working procedure, a problem, a systematic overview of contents, a process, a particular case, a poem, or 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 organiser enables the teacher designer to ‘see’ how they will set up the student’s learning experiences 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 will learn and why. The organiser serves as an organiser and stimulator of students’ learning experiences. It
focuses the students on the main aims of a particular course.
- Some examples are from Tony Earl and Jan Nedermeijer.
- Another interesting approach it the Advance organiser 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.