The Effects of Sequence and Synthesis on Concept Learning Using a Parts-Conceptual Structure. IDD&E Working Paper No. 8.

This study investigated the effects of sequence and synthesis prescriptions from the Elaboration Theory by teaching the parts of a microcomputer system based on a parts-conceptual structure. A 2x3 factorial design was used which incorporated two sequences, general-to-detailed and detailed-to-general, and three levels of synthesizer, i.e., no synthesizer, synthesizer first, and synthesizer last. The subjects were 128 eighth-grade pupils who were randomly assigned to the six treatment groups. Each group viewed a slide/tape presentation followed by a paper-and-pencil test on attributes and relationships of 19 concepts. A two-way analysis of variance revealed that the attributes of the concepts were learned equally well by all groups, but relationships were learned better (1) with a general-to-detailed sequence than with a detailed-to-general sequence (p.<05), and (2) with the synthesizer last (p<.01) or no synthesizer at all (p.<05) than with the synthesizer first. Twenty-five references are provided. (Author/RP)