This paper offers a critique of elaboration theory (ET) based on recent cognitive research and offers suggestions for updating the model to reflect new knowledge. It begins by summarizing the basic strategies of this model for sequencing and organizing courses of instruction: (1) organizing structure; (2) simple-to-complex sequence; (3) sequencing…

Sequenced writing assignments--a series of related writing tasks--offer students frequent opportunities to write and to acquire writing skills through redundancy, progressively more complicated cognitive and rhetorical demands, and a diversity of learning activities. The most frequently identified goal of sequencing is to move students beyond…

RESEARCH ON SEQUENCING OF INSTRUCTION CAN BE DIVIDED INTO NINE TYPES ACCORDING TO DIFFERENT DIMENSIONS ON WHICH THE EXPERIMENTS VARY. SITUATIONS IN WHICH THE LEARNER CONTROLS THE OBJECTIVES ARE DIFFICULT TO EVALUATE EXPLICITLY BECAUSE OF DIFFERING CONTENT LEARNED. AMONG EXPERIMENTER-CONTROLLED LEARNING SITUATIONS, THE WORK OF GAGNE AND HIS…

The present exclusive and pervasive interest in the internal validity of learning hierarchy experiments and four methods for generating candidates for learning hierarchies are reviewed. The author poses questions about the external validity of learning hierarchy research--whether for instance, any instructional sequence might equal one suggested…