The Effect of the Sequence of Instructional Events in a Concept Learning Task in Film Study.

A study was devised to investigate the effects of sequence of concept presentation and practice in a concept learning task. Learners were presented with either one conjunctive concept at a time, or with multiple concepts all related to the same principle. Practice was sequenced in four positions: before concept presentation, after concept presentation, both before and after, and all practice with no concept presentation. Material presented (developed especially for the study) was a film study unit of an audiovisual materials and procedures course in education. Subjects were students in the class and were assigned to treatments in a randomized pretest-posttest control group design. Results of analyses showed that the various treatment groups were all significantly better on posttest, but did not differ significantly from one another. This result may be due to such things as timing of reinforcement, a ceiling effect produced by the efficacy of the instructional unit, or to failure of the principles behind the manipulations for the specific age group and task-type selected. (SH)