Cognitive Load

Many times during the term, we are concerned about how students are processing, applying and retaining information in a meaningful and enduring way. Cognitive Load is a major concept, which can assist in designing our instructional methods. So, I would like to share several 2017 reports on Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) for your consideration.

CLT is how human brains learn, process and store information and has described as the single most important thing for teachers to know. In summary, "the human brain can only process a small amount of new information at once, but it can process very large amounts of stored information. Information is processed in the working memory (WM), where small amounts of information are stored for a very short time. The average person can hold about four ‘chunks’ of information in their WM at one time. Long-term memory (LTM) is where large amounts of information are stored semi-permanently. Information is stored in the LTM in ‘schemas’, which provide a system for organizing and storing knowledge. If a student’s WM is overloaded, there is a risk that they will not be able to make sense of the information".

CLT indicates that when teaching students new content and skills, teachers are more effective when they provide explicit guidance accompanied by practice and feedback. Leppink, et. al (2015) produced a number of instructional techniques that are directly transferable to the classroom. These include the ‘worked example effect’, which is the widely replicated finding that novice learners who are given worked examples to study perform better on subsequent tests than learners who are required to solve the equivalent problems themselves. Another is the 'expertise reversal effect', which shows that as students become more proficient at solving a particular type of problem, they should gradually be given more opportunities for independent problem solving.

Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation. (2017). Cognitive load theory: Research that teachers really need to understand. NSW Department of Education.

Leppink, J., Paas, F., van Gog, T., van der Vleuten, C. & van Merrienboer, J. (2014). Effects of pairs of problems and examples on task performance and different types of cognitive load’, Learning and Instruction, (30), 32-42.