Investigating the Effect of Different Verbal Formats of Advance Organizers on Third Graders’ Understanding of Heat Transfer Concept

The emergence of computer and multimedia technology change the forms of instructional materials and instructional design plays an important role on student learning outcome in multimedia learning. Research has found that using advance organizers has the potential for achieving learning objectives. Thus, this study investigated how using different forms (oral narration/onscreen text) of advance organizers (AOs) with different formats (oral narration/onscreen text) of learning content affected third graders’ learning on heat transfer concepts. A 2X2 design was employed and 126 third grade students participated in this study. It was found in the form of advance organizers that there was a significant interaction with the format of learning content on student post test performance. The form of AOs did not affect student performance when reading onscreen text content. Also, the format of the learning content did not influence student learning when using oral forms of AO. When using onscreen text as AO, it was found that students who read onscreen text content perform better than those who listen to oral narration content. Meanwhile, students who listened to the oral narration AO perform better than those who read the onscreen text AO before listening to the same oral narration learning content. It showed that processing message encoded in the same format in advance help learners later in processing information that was encoded in the same format. Detailed discussions on the findings are provided in this article.