Learning Skills and Instruction. Skills Essential to Learning Television Project: Working Paper.

This working paper, which reviews the experimental literature on learning skills to provide background information to the staff of the Skills Essential to Learning Television Project (a multi-level series of video and print resources for classroom use), covers four areas: study skills, instructional development and design, cognitive psychology, and adjunct aids. The focus is on the processes that learners bring with them into instructional settings. A summary of research related to adjunct aids is presented in a table covering advanced organizers, typographical cues, directions, objectives, quizzes, interspersed questions, interspersed directions, and directions to draw pictures. The following possible dimensions for adjunct aids are also displayed in a table: verbal versus nonverbal, active response versus no active response, location (pre-instructional, interspersed, or post-instructional), concrete versus abstract, thematic versus formal, and factual versus higher order memory. A set of general recommendations based on the literature review is offered. Thirty-nine references are listed (LMM)