EFFECTS OF AN ANALOGY-INDUCED SCHEMA IN NEW DOMAIN LEARNING (NUMBER SYSTEMS, ADVANCE ORGANIZER)

Learning in a new domain is thought to be influenced by availability of appropriate activated schema that provide cognitive structures for storing new concepts and knowledge so that they can be retrieved readily. Ausubel (1960) showed that an advance organizer can perform the function of activating an appropriate schema. Mayer (1979a) identified conditions under which an advance organizer could be expected to be effective. These conditions demand that the organizer be meaningful to the learner. Although all college students are skilled in using the decimal number system for counting, few are able to transfer those skills to other number systems. The counting process can be reduced to three rules which are sufficient for counting in any number system. Presentation of these rules comprises an advance organizer except that it is not meaningful for many students. The decimal number system can be used as an analogy to make these rules meaningful. The problem studied was whether presentation of a decimal number system analogy would affect learning to count in the binary, octal and hexadecimal number systems. A computer instruction program was written to provide the instruction. The subjects completed the instruction on their own as a class project over a 7-week period. Treatment subjects received the analogy prior to presentation of the advance organizer; control subjects received the analogy immediately prior to the posttest. No significant differences were found between the treatment and the control groups in posttest achievement, total time for completing the instruction, or attitude toward computer instruction. Significant differences were found in the numbers of practice exercises completed, in the time needed for each exercise, and in the time used to complete the treatment module. A conclusion was that the presentation of the analogy had a positive influence on learning. The low statistical significance between the group achievement means was inferred to be due mainly to individual skills for finding the cognitive structures needed for effective learning