Organizational Structures that Support Learning

id: 1764943054
Date: Dec. 5, 2025, 2:13 p.m.
Author: Donald F. Elger

Organizational Structures that Support Learning
- Goals
  - Organize information in the best ways when learning, teaching, or creating content.
  - Describe the four big organizational structures: hierarchies, graphs, tables, and lists.
  - Reap the rewards that come from sound organization.
- What
  - When you are learning, teaching, or creating content, you can choose different ways to organize information.
  - The best choice is the one that works for your purposes and your audience.
  - There are four main structures you will use.
- How to Excel
  - Select the best structure or combination from the four big organizational structures.
  - Decide the best way to apply that structure for your purpose.
  - Build the content you want to organize and revise until the structure serves your goals.
- The Four Big Organizational Structures
  - Hierarchies
    - Show what belongs to what.
    - Build mental schemas that mirror how the brain organizes knowledge.
    - Useful for lessons, multi-level ideas, definitions, explanations, and step-by-step skills.
    - Support top-down clarity and bottom-up analysis.
  - Graphs
    - Show connections across ideas in many directions.
    - Support flexible thinking, integration, and systems understanding.
    - Useful for exploring relationships, causes, effects, examples, misconceptions, and applications.
    - Reveal patterns that are not obvious in a hierarchy or list.
  - Tables
    - Best for contrast and choice.
      - Contrast: reveal differences across items, cases, categories, or data.
      - Choose: select a property value, correct equation, method, category, action, or interpretation.
    - Reduce cognitive load by showing relationships at a glance.
    - Useful for comparisons, decisions, definitions, classification, and selecting among options.
  - Lists
    - Present ideas clearly and simply.
    - Support memory by chunking information into small units.
    - Useful for steps, criteria, examples, reminders, and summaries.
    - Help learners scan, review, and recall with ease.
- Summary
  - Use hierarchies to show structure.
  - Use graphs to show connections.
  - Use tables to contrast and choose.
  - Use lists to clarify and simplify.