Selection and Organization of Content

Selection and Organization of Content

 It involves selection of content in line with the goals and objectives of the

curriculum. The selected content will have to be arranged in a form that will help
teacher in choosing and organizing appropriate learning experiences for the
classroom.

 Content organization is a response to the activity of the information seeker,

designed to make that activity more successful. In other words, we organize
content (or anything else) so that the reader's attempts to find it will be successful.
 Selection and Organization of Content

 The subject matter or content is significant if it is selected and organized for the

development of learning activities, skills, processes, and attitude. It also
develops the three domains of learning namely the cognitive, affective and
psychomotor skills and considers the cultural aspects of the learners.
 Selection and Organization of Content

• What is Content in Education?

 Curriculum content simply means the totality of what is to be taught in a school

system. The content component of teaching learning situation refers to the
important facts, principles and concepts to be taught. It can be in form of
knowledge, skills, attitude and values that learners are exposed to.
 Selection and Organization of Content

Content Selection in Student-Centered Curriculum

 Students come to have a more realistic idea of what can be achieved in a given course.
 Learning comes to be seen as a process of gradually reaching achievable goals.
 Students develop greater sensitivity to their role as learner, and their rather vague
notions of what it is to be a learner can become much sharper.
 Self-evaluation becomes more feasible.
 Classroom activity can be seen to relate to the learner’s real-life needs.
 To development of competences can be seen as a gradual, rather than an all-or-nothing
process.
 Selection and Organization of Content

• Set some type of criteria to help select appropriate content for your course and should be:

 Fit with your course learning goals

 Have importance in the discipline
 Be based on or related to research
 Appeal to student interests
 Not overlap excessively with student past experience or knowledge
 Be multi-functional (help teach more than one concept, skill, or problem)
 Stimulate search for meaning
 Encourage further investigation
 Show interrelationships among concepts
 Selection and Organization of Content

Aims for selecting content:

 To provide students with effective learning strategies.

 To assist students to identify their preferred ways of learning.
 To develop skill needed to negotiate the curriculum.
 To encourage students to set their own objectives.
 To encourages students to adopt realistic goals and time frames.
 To develop the students skills of/ by self- evaluation.
 Selection and Organization of Content

Guiding Principles in the Selection and Organization of Content 

 Validity – Teaching the content that we ought to teach according to national standards explicit in the
Basic Education Curriculum; it also means teaching the content in order to realize the goals and
objectives of the course as laid down in the basic education curriculum.

 Significance – What we teach should respond to the needs and interests of the learners, hence
meaningful and significant. 

 Balance – Content includes not only facts but also concepts and values. The use of the three-level
approach ensures a balance of cognitive, psychomotor, and affective lesson content. A balanced
content is something that is not too easy to bore the above average student, neither not too difficult
to turn off the average.t
 Selection and Organization of Content

Guiding Principles in the Selection and Organization of Content (continued)

 Self-sufficiency – Content fully covers the essentials. Learning content is not "mile-wide-and-inch-
deep." The essentials are sufficiently covered and are treated in depth. This is a case of "less is more."

 Interest – Teacher considers the interest of the learners, their developmental stages and cultural and
ethnic background.

 Utility – Will this content be of use to the learners? It is not meant only to be memorized for test and
grade purposes. What is learned has a function even after examinations are over.

 Feasibility – The content is feasible in the sense that the essential content can be covered in the
amount of time available for instruction. A guaranteed and a viable curriculum is the first in the
school- related factors that has the greatest impact on student achievement. 
 Selection and Organization of Content

The Structure of Subject Matter Content

 Our subject matter content includes cognitive, skill, and affective components.
The cognitive component is concerned with facts, concepts, principles, hypothesis,
theories, and laws. The skill component refers to thinking skills as well as
manipulative skills while the affective component is the realm of values and
attitudes.
 Selection and Organization of Content

The Structure of Subject Matter Content (continued)

Cognitive - The mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through
thought, experience, and the senses.

The following falls under cognition:

 Facts - An idea or action that can be verified. 

 Concepts - Is a categorization of events, places, people, ideas. 
 Principles - The relationship(s) between and among facts and concepts.
 Hypotheses - educated guesses about relationships (principles)
 Theories - Explains why these principles are true.
 Laws - Firmly established, thoroughly tested principle or theory
 Selection and Organization of Content

The Structure of Subject Matter Content (continued)

Skill - Thinking skills involve mental processes used in cognitive functions that enable people to make
meaning from, and create with, information.

The following falls under skills:

 Manipulative Skills - Subjects that are dominantly skill – oriented. (PE, Music etc.)
 Thinking skills - They refer to the application of what was learned. (problem-solving) 
 Divergent Thinking - Process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible
solutions.
 Convergent Thinking - Narrowing down from many possible thoughts to end up on a single best thought or
an answer to a problem.
 Critical Thinking - Involves evaluating information or arguments in terms of their accuracy and worth.
 Selection and Organization of Content

The Structure of Subject Matter Content (continued)

Affective - The sense the individual makes of the world around him in relation to
what he feels is valuable, ethically or morally right.

The following falls under the affective component:

 Values - Values help to guide our behavior. Values decide what we think as for
right, wrong, good, or unjust.
 Attitudes - Attitudes are our likes and dislike of things, people, and objects.
Attitudes are the response that is a result of our values.
 Selection and Organization of Content

Organizing Content

 Many variations on concept mapping techniques exist to help you decide on an

organizational structure for your content. The key idea is to name, in a word or
two, the major topics or concepts for your course, then try to visually place them
on the page.
 You can use a hierarchical approach or put the concept in the center of the page
and work out from there. Put the words into boxes or bubbles and connect them
with lines or arrows to show how the material connects.
 Selection and Organization of Content

Organizing Content (continued)

 You may also want to put verbs on the connectors to clarify the relationships
between ideas. For an even more flexible approach, try using an index card or
sticky note for each concept, instead of boxes on one sheet of paper, and physically
move them around until you see an organization that makes sense.
 For more linear thinkers, creating lists of headings and subheadings is equally
effective.
 Selection and Organization of Content

Organizing Content (continued)

• Some suggestions for ordering the topics or concepts include:

 Topic by topic – There are no set relationships amongst the topics, so the ordering
is not critical. This works well for courses that revolve around current issues, for
example.
 Chronological – Moving from past to present is a very common and easy to
implement organizational pattern.
 Causal – The course presents a number of events or issues that culminate in some
final effect or solution.
 Selection and Organization of Content

• Organizing Content (continued)

 Cumulative – Each concept builds on the previous one(s).

 Problem-centered – Problems, questions, or cases represent the principal
organizing features of the course.
 Spiral – Key topics or concepts are revisited throughout the course, with new
information or insight developing each time.
 Selection and Organization of Content

• Organizing Content (continued)

• Within each class, also consider how to organize your material so that students can both learn and
retain it. Different philosophies of learning are represented. Some ideas to consider are:

 Start with what students already know and then move to the abstract model or theory.
 Start with concrete examples, such as cases, news items, or other real-world situations, then
generate the abstract concepts.
 Start with a solution, conclusion, or model and work backwards to the question.
 Give students time to reflect, individually or through discussion, on what and how they are learning.
 Build in practice time, with feedback, either in class or on assignments so that students learn to work
with the concepts and can receive assistance with problem areas.
 Selection and Organization of Content

• Organize Content Effectively to Maximize Student Learning

• There are two main ways to organize content:

 Sequential: Sequential information simply means that information is presented in a list, or

information is presented as though there is a problem followed by a solution. We learn how to
cook by following a recipe exactly. We learn to read a book after we learn to recognize
individual letters with many steps in between. There is a sequence to how material is presented
and learned.

 Non-Sequential: Learning non-sequentially can also be a natural way to learn and can work
for E-Learners because they are able to skip parts of the process that don’t necessarily pertain
to them. 
 Selection and Organization of Content

• Organize Content Effectively to Maximize Student Learning (continued)

• Sequential Learning Structures:

1. Description/List - A list is an easy to recognize manner of presenting information.  You

describe
something by enumerating its features, characteristics, or examples. A list can provide
information
about how to open a pop bottle and how to split an atom. The list can be in sequence
order, or it
can simply include the information about what has to be accomplished.
 Selection and Organization of Content

• Organize Content Effectively to Maximize Student Learning (continued)

• Sequential Learning Structures:

2. Problem/Solution - Presents why there is a problem, then introduce one or more possible solutions
to fix the problem.

3. Simple to Complex - Providing students with simple information before providing them with complex
information is a way to sequence things so that it makes learning easier.

4. Familiar to Unfamiliar - Similar to going from easy to difficult, familiar to unfamiliar starts with what
the student knows, then moves on to teach them new information. This can be done by using
metaphors, analogies, similes, comparisons and other methods often used in literature and writing
to teach new information.
 Selection and Organization of Content

• Organize Content Effectively to Maximize Student Learning (continued)

• Non-Sequential Learning Structures:

 In non-sequential or network structures, learners have to get meaning out of the
information presented to them. Often, this information is presented through case
studies and scenarios. These formats which a student should be able to use
information they have to determine either what the problem is, or at least give them
information to begin an investigation.
 References
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• https://www.slideshare.net/6172315/selection-of-content
• https://www.iedunote.com/values-attitudes-difference#:~:text=Values%20decide%20what%20we%20think,things%2C%20people%2C%20and%20objects.&text
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• https://www.shiftelearning.com/blog/choosing-an-organization-strategy-elearning