Motivation and Learning Strategies for College Success : A Self-management Approach

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44 CHAPTER 2

Organizational Strategies

Psychologists have found that it is difficult, and sometimes impos-

sible, for humans to learn unorganized bits and pieces of information

(e.g., definitions, dates, names, ideas) without imposing patterns of organ-

ization on the information (Gaskins & Elliot, 1991). By organizing infor-

mation, connections and interrelationships are made within a body of new

information. Learning is facilitated when a learner becomes aware of the

inherent organizational structure of new material or imposes an organi-

zational structure on material when no such structure initially exists. A

body of new information to be learned is stored more effectively and

remembered more completely when it is organized (Ormrod, 1998).

The following are two lists of words. Read the first list at a rate of

approximately one word per second, cover the list, and write down

EXERCISE 2.3: DEMONSTRATING THE IMPORTANCE

OF CATEGORIZING KNOWLEDGE

Directions: Try the following experiment (Halpern, 1996, pp. 489–490).

as many of the words as you can remember, then repeat this process

with the second list:

Girl

Heart

Robin

Purple

Finger

Flute

Blue

Organ

Man

Hawk

Green

Lung

Eagle

Child

Piano

Now, cover the list and write down as many words from this list

as you can remember. Don’t look!

Now read the next list, cover it, and then write down as many of

the words that you can remember from this list:

Green

Blue