Universal Principles of Design, Revised and Updated

Advance Organizer

An instructional technique that helps people understand new information in terms of what they already know.

Advance organizers are brief chunks of information—spoken, written, or illustrated—presented prior to new material to help facilitate learning and understanding. They are distinct from overviews and summaries in that they are presented on a more abstract level than the rest of the information—they present the “big picture” prior to the details. Since the technique depends on a defined entry point, it is generally applied to linear presentations (e.g., traditional classroom instruction), and does not work as well in nonlinear, exploratory learning contexts (e.g., free-play simulation).1

There are two kinds of advance organizers: ...