The name of this technique is self-explanatory.
The instructor provides students with an empty or partially completed outline of an in-class presentation or homework assignment and gives them a limited amount of time to fill in the blank spaces. To help students better organize and learn course content,many instructors already provide outlines of their lectures at the beginning or end of class sessions. In our experience, however, fewer teachers use the outline format to assess students’ learning of that same content.
The empty outline technique helps find out how well students have “caught” the important points of a lecture, reading, or audiovisual presentation. It also helps learners recall and organize the main points of a lesson within an appropriate knowledge structure, making retention more likely and aiding understanding.
Improve skill at paying attention TGI goal 9
Develop ability to concentrate TGI goal 10
Improve listening skill TGI goal 12
Develop appropriate study skills, strategies, and habits TGI goal 16
Learn terms and facts of this subject TGI goal 18
This technique works best in courses where a large amount of content-facts and principles-is presented regularly in a highly structured manner.
For example, empty outlines have been used with success in introductory courses in physical and life sciences, nursing, law, art history, and music history. The technique can be used at the conclusion of a class session or at the beginning of the next one. Because it generates quite a bit of feedback, the instructor usually can read every response only in small classes. In large courses, the instructor can collect only group responses, or read and respond to only a sample of student outlines.
From pathophysiology nursing
Experience and examination results had convinced this nursing professor that her students had difficulty recognizing, organizing, and recalling the most important points in her lectures. To gain specific insights into how students were managing the heavy information load of her lectures, she handed out copies of an Empty outline form ten minutes before the end of class. The outline contained four main heading, representing the four main topics she had just lectured on. Each main heading was followed by empty lines for three to five subheadings. She directed the students to fill in the subheadings quickly, making use of their class notes. At the end of the session, she collected the forms.
The empty outline form was based on her lecture outline, of course; so she could easily compare the students‘ subheadings with her own. A quick readingshowed her that most of the students placed their responses under the correct headings. However, they often made their subheadings too specific, or they mixed items of different levels of specificity. The responses demonstrated that students were missing atleast some important subtopics because they were distracted by facts.
Armed with examples from the empty outlines, the instructor was better able to illustrate the level on which she wanted students to focus their attention during the lectures. By the third supplication of this CAT, most students had located that level and were therefore more successful at” seeing the forest for the trees.”
From Child Language Acquisition( Child Development)
Before he showed a videotape of an educational television program on the stages of language acquisition from birth to five years, the instructor watched the video himself and sketched a simple outline of its topics and major points. The major topics in his outline were the developmental stages of language acquisition; the subheadings were the developmentalmilestones that characterize each stage. To create an empty outline assessment from, he simple deleted the content of his subheadings, leaving the main headings intact.
After the class had viewed the hour-long videotape, the instructor passed out the one-page empty outline forms and asked students to work in pairs to fill them in. He allowed five minutes for the work and then collected the completed forms. A quick analysis of the results showed him that his students most clearly recalled the milestones from the first and last stages presented in the video. This information give the teacher clear directions on where to begin the follow-up discussion andwhat to focus on. It also convinced him of the need to stop in the middle of the videotape to allow students time to take notes and review what they had seen and heard to that point.
From International Marketing Business/Management
In this upper-division course, taught primarily through the case method, the instructor wanted to determine whether her students werenoting the major points brought out during case discussions.