An-Najah Staff

36 male and female community college freshmen were presented with a 2000 word passage titled: “The Scientific Method of Research”.  Subjects were randomly assigned into three experimental groups:  The first group received the passage which was sequenced according to Reigeluth’s Elaboration Theory (RET), the second group received the same passage but was sequenced according to Gagne’s Hierarchical Approach (GHA), and the third one received it in a Random Sequence (RS).

On a 13-short answer immediate posttest questions measuring three levels of learning:  Remember Specific Information (RSI), and Apply General Information (AGI); F-test failed to show any significant main effect between the three groups; although the average achievement of RET group was higher than the GHA on RGI, AGI, and the Total test.  Whereas, the average achievement of GHA was higher than the RET on RSI sub-test only.  It also was noticed that the average achievement of RET and GHA groups was higher than the RS group on all sub-tests, and the Total test.

These insignificant results call researchers’ attention to duplicate this study, and conduct more studies considering other variables which may have an influence, or interact with content sequences, such as students’ abilities and content’s length.  Such studies could help researchers to specify conditions for using a certain model of sequence rather than another, and why.