ELearning/Course building/Managing cognitive load

Cognitive load was first addressed in the ELearning/Foundations section when we examined efficiency in learning. The central purpose of managing cognitive load is to make learning more efficient and effective. We do this by reducing extraneous (irrelevant) load, appropriately imposing germane (relevant) load, and tailoring instruction to learner expertise (novice to expert). Specific strategies outlined by Clark, Nguyen & Sweller (2006) are summarized here. We highly recommend the book as a permanent resource for instructional designers. You will note that some guidelines are relevant to only certain types of instruction. When this is the case, we will alert you to this fact.

Minimize unproductive sources of load

Minimizing extraneous cognitive load frees mental capacity for productive germane load.

Guidelines for audio-visual instruction

• Use diagrams to optimize instruction involving relatively complex spatial relationships

1. Relevant to instruction involving spatial relationships and manipulation such as circuitry, the assembly of physical objects and chemistry.
2. Many abstract concepts can be illustrated through analogies, examples and non-examples (i.e., bad examples).
3. All elements of a visual can be viewed simultaneously as opposed to text that must be processed sequentially.

• Use diagrams to help learners build deeper understanding

1. Complex concepts, processes or objects that can be visualized complement and reinforce the audio or text description.
2. Diagrams are very effective in helping learners build schema due to the dual encoding (text, visual) of information.

• Explain diagrams with words presented by audio narration

1. Applies when visual elements are not self-explanatory.
2. Since text language, which is essentially auditory, must be first mediated through sight, it competes with diagrams for processing time in working memory. The result is that attention bounces back and forth between the text and diagram.
3. Utilizing the auditory channel for language, visual attention can focus on the diagram. When both systems are utilized, learning is enhanced (the modality effect).

Focus attention and avoid split attention

• Use cues and signals to focus attention to important visual and textual content

1. Visual cues include headlines, arrows, underlining, bold, italics, partial masks, vocal emphasis, tones and bells which draw and focus our attention.
2. Cues and signals are most useful when content is presented in a dynamic format such as multimedia or classroom instruction.

• Integrate explanatory text close to related visuals to avoid split attention.

1. Learning complex information is degraded when studying materials that lead to split attention. Distance between the visual and textual elements requires the viewer to expend mental resources to integrate the two sources of information.
2. Research shows that narrated visuals result in significantly more learning than integrated text, which is better than splitting attention.

• Note-taking during presentations should be discouraged as it requires significant cognitive resources that are better spent focusing on the material.

Concentrate on the essentials

It is especially important that novice learners not be overloaded with information, so it is imperative that the instructor weed out extraneous information that should be presented later in the course, as a supplement, or not at all.

• Pare content down to essentials

1. Sort out the need-to-know from the nice-to-know and throw out the nice-to-know when instructing novices.
2. Vigorous writing is concise. Succinct rendering of content is more effective that verbose versions.
3. Write concise instructional materials, including scripts for your audio narrations. “One must deliberately not explain everything, only what must be explained” (conclusion from several usability tests).
4. Concise instruction is not only more vigorous, it saves time as well.

• Eliminate extraneous visuals, text and audio

1. Omit extraneous words and pictures that you have added for interest.
2. Adding motivational content actually depresses learning. Instead, use the time for interacting with students. Omit additions designed to increase emotional motivation and invest your resources in cognitive motivation instead.
3. Examples include graphic organizers at the beginning of a lesson that help build mental models, worked examples and backward fading of problems.

• Eliminate redundancy in content delivery modes

1. Redundancy refers to providing more expressions of content than is needed for understanding.
2. Verbatim text placed on a narrated page is one of the most common mistakes online instructors make. Use brief bullet points instead, or present a visual element to accompany the narration. You can display the text version after the narrated version. The text then serves as a review opportunity.
3. Don’t add words to visuals that are self-explanatory.
4. Research indicates that a visual is most effectively explained by audio narration in the beginning stages of learning and are most effective when presented without words during later stages of instruction. If your audience includes both novices and experts, it is best to provide the advance learners with the option to silence the audio.

Provide external memory support

External memory support is commonly implemented in the form of performance aids, also called job aids. Performance aids are simply factual information and procedure guidelines, in text and/or graphics, that are readily accessible when needed while solving problems, writing or other learning activity. When applicable, performance aids should also be usable on the job.

• Provide performance aids as external memory supports

1. Examples include reference guides, charts, and cheat sheets. Quick guides for software programs are very common.
2. Aids are especially useful for tasks that are rarely performed.
3. Reference-based education is especially useful in courses that include a large number of facts and procedures. This approach concentrates on teaching students how to efficiently and effectively use their references.
4. Performance aids should not be provided when procedures need to be completed quickly and accurately for safety or effectiveness reasons. These procedures need to be practiced until they are over-learned (become automatic).

• Design performance aids using cognitive load management techniques

1. The goal of performance aids is to support performance and minimize cognitive load for the user.
2. Whenever possible, visuals should be used - with explanatory text added if necessary. Text should generally be integrated into the visual and not placed separately.
3. Use arrows and other motion cues rather than text to depict motion.
4. When possible, performance aids should be integrated into software applications. Context sensitive help systems are built into many software programs.
5. If your final course objectives require learners to complete an assignment from memory, you should fade memory support as the course progresses.

Use segmenting, sequencing and learner pacing

One of the gifts designers provide for students is content that is sliced, diced and served in digestible portions. Although the intrinsic cognitive load of your content cannot be controlled, you can manage it through segmenting and sequencing. Managing cognitive load is an important outcome of your course design.

• When teaching processes, teach system components before teaching the full process

1. Present a high level overview of the system with little detail, then teach the names and functions of each component and finally show how they interact with the entire process.
2. Visually segregate each component in context of the whole system as you move from component to component. Highlighting, semitransparent masks, boxes and the like can be used.

• Teach supporting knowledge separate from teaching procedure steps

1. Procedures generally consist of action steps as well as supporting information such as the goals of the procedure, its rationale as well as concepts and facts associated with the steps. Presenting everything at once quickly overloads working memory.
2. One approach is to teach only the steps and ask the student to practice them. Following practice, present the steps again, this time incorporating all the supporting knowledge.
3. Another approach is to first teach and engage with the supporting knowledge and then teach the procedure steps.
4. Consider the appropriateness of two design alternatives:
   1. Directive approaches are characterized by a number of short lessons that start with prerequisite knowledge and skills and build hierarchically to more complex levels of attainment. A typical lesson would include a small content segment followed by examples or demonstrations and practice with feedback. Math lessons are especially appropriate to this approach.
   2. Guided discovery teaches new knowledge and skills in the context of solving a case problem, which is usually the starting point of the lesson. The fundamental difference is that the problem drives the learning rather than being an example of the concepts and principles previously taught. Students learn domain content in order to solve the problem, rather than solving the problem as an application of what has been taught. This approach is used extensively in teaching medical concepts and practices.
   3. Research indicates that novice learners can be easily overwhelmed by problem-based learning, and that more advanced learners much prefer the guided discovery approach.

• Give advanced learners control over pacing

1. An alternative strategy to segmenting and sequencing content is to offer students the opportunity to assimilate new content at their own pace through learner control.
2. Novice learners can be overwhelmed by this freedom, so it is recommended for more advanced learners only.

• Give novice learners tools for controlling the pace of individual lessons

1. An important learner control for novice learners is to allow them to replay and review instructional content.
2. Consider using a series of still diagrams rather than an animated display.
3. Consider lessons delivered in text with still visuals rather than a video version.

Transition from worked examples to practice

Conventional wisdom says that practice is the best way to build skills. Lots of practice! There is a better way. A proven method for making practice more effective and efficient involves using a series of worked and completion examples that require students to gradually fill in more and more steps until they are assigned full practice problems.

2. Backward fading (credit: Ruth Clark)

• Replace some practice problems with worked examples

1. A worked example is a step-by-step demonstration of how to perform a task or solve a problem. It aids the learner as she builds schema of the issue.
2. An example would be to replace eight practice problems with four worked examples and four practice problems. The lesson alternates worked examples with similar practice problems. Thus, a worked example of a blueprint problem would be followed by a different blueprint problem.

• Use completion examples to promote deeper processing

1. When presented with a worked example followed by a practice problem, some students may be tempted to skip the example or give it a cursory review and so miss the benefits it provides.
2. A completion example is a hybrid between worked examples and practice problems. Some steps are demonstrated as in a worked example while others are left to the student as in a practice problem. In order to complete the problem, the student will have to actively process the worked out portions to be able to complete the open portions.

• Transition from worked examples to problem assignments with backward fading

1. Backward fading is a process in which worked examples evolve into full problems by gradually increasing the number of steps that must be completed by the learner.
2. The lesson begins with a fully worked example, which serves as a model for the student. The next example is worked through to the last step, which must be completed by the student. Additional examples require more and more of the problems to be completed by the student until he must complete an entire problem.
3. This method works best with novice learners. Once a student acquires the basic schema for the skill or concept, she learns best by applying the schema instead of wasting additional time with more fully or partially worked examples.

• Format your worked examples to minimize extraneous load

1. Poorly formatted worked examples and practice problems can defeat their advantages.
2. Fully worked examples can be explained using audio. Since audio is transient, always furnish a replay button.
3. For faded completion examples, use visuals with integrated text instructions rather than audio, animation or separated text (which causes split attention).

Guidelines for imposing germane cognitive load

In the previous section, we addressed way to minimize unproductive sources of cognitive load. Doing so frees mental capacity for productive, relevant load. Here we review techniques for gradually imposing relevant cognitive load.

• Use diverse worked examples to foster learning transfer

1. Learning transfer is the capacity to apply a principle learned in one setting to a different setting. Near transfer activities are completed more or less the same way each time. Far transfer activities require the learner to adapt what has been learned to each new situation. Think of this as a continuum rather than a dichotomy. Far transfer requires that learners build schema flexible enough to transfer to many situations. Essential features of problems must be “abstracted” from the examples for this transfer to occur. The “structural features” must be abstracted from the “surface features”, the cover story.
2. To accelerate the abstraction process, provide students with several examples or problems with similar structural features but different cover stories. We call this varied context examples. When presenting varied problems, encourage students to focus on the structure, not on the cover story.
3. Since problems with diverse contexts add more cognitive load than problems that are similar, providing worked examples is especially important.
4. A Microsoft Excel spreadsheet example would be to demonstrate calculating profit per month, per employee, per customer and per sale and ask students to do the same with a different example.

• Help learners exploit examples through self-explanations

1. Self-explanation is a mental dialog students have with themselves when studying worked examples, helping build accurate schema. Good self-explanations involve deep processing of the material – not easy for many students.
2. There are three types of productive self-explanations:
   1. Monitor and correct – the student identifies elements she doesn’t understand and then attempts to resolve the misunderstanding.
   2. Try and check – the learner reads the worked example, covering up the solution steps and tries to solve the problem.
   3. Inferencing - the learner makes new connections, draws inferences, between parts of the worked example, or between the example and her prior knowledge.
3. Help students learn to self-explain by:
   1. Demonstrating a good example and discuss what you did.
   2. Asking questions like, “How does this work?” “Why is it done like this?” “Is there an alternative solution?” “What could a better solution look like?”
   3. Ask students to practice self-explanation by typing or writing their thoughts as they occur; review and provide guidance.

• Help learners automate new knowledge and skills

1. When knowledge and skills become automated, they are encoded into long-term memory and can be retrieved with minimal resources from working memory. It is the result of the repeated reinforcement of a mental model, a schema, a memory circuit.
2. Automaticity requires a great deal of drill and practice. Behavioral techniques like flash cards and Jeopardy-like games are helpful.
3. Another form of practice is mental rehearsal: the introspective or covert rehearsal that takes place within the individual as she thinks through the performance of an activity. Think of yourself taking the perfect dive, making the perfect golf swing, or giving the perfect speech. Now do it again and again. Mental rehearsal does not replace physical practice, but research tells us it is powerful once you have mastered the correct methods.

Accommodating differences in learner expertise

Instructional methods that manage cognitive load serve as substitutes for missing schemas in the long-term memory of novices. As learners gain expertise, schemas begin to compensate for limited working memory (remember the “driving on the highway” and “driving in a school zone” schemas). This means the instructional substitutes become less and less useful until they have no effect or, in some cases, depress learning for advanced students. Here are five guidelines for accommodating differences in student expertise:

• Concentrate on writing or narrating in a highly coherent, clear and concise manner when addressing low-knowledge (beginning) students. Examples of adding clarity include:

1. Using explicit statements that require minimal inferences or interpretation.
2. Adding section and subsection headers in text and dividing the content into more sections in presentations for new learners, but not for more advanced students.
3. For new learners, using nouns multiple times instead of substituting pronouns whenever there is a possibility of ambiguity in interpretation. Doing this for more advanced learners, on the other hand, may increase cognitive load.
4. Adding definitions or explanations for newly introduced concepts.
5. Adding previews of forthcoming content. This orients new students to the topics to follow.

• Eliminate redundant content for more experienced learners

1. Experienced learners do not need the redundant information contained in definitions and explanations useful for beginners.
2. Research suggests that we invest more resources in the design of effective materials for low prior knowledge than for high prior knowledge learners.
3. Diagrams explained by audio are most effective for novice learners. However, as expertise increases, there is a point at which there is no significant difference, and eventually the diagram alone is best.
4. For blended courses, have students study background knowledge prior to class so that all arrive at more equivalent levels.

• Transition from worked examples to problem assignments as learners gain experience

1. The value of worked examples decreases as learners gain expertise.
2. Begin with pairing worked examples and problems, transition to backward faded problems, and finally to all problems.

• Use directive designs for novice learners and transition to guided discovery for advanced learners

1. Prepare directive lessons for novice learners that provide brief content segments that include explanations, examples and practice.
2. Prepare guided discovery lessons for more experienced learners. Allow more navigational freedom of choice.
3. Prepare directive lessons when it is important to save time.

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