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Phil Parker
Learning Development
Consultant
Nimble Elearning
How pizza can improve your
course writing
If someone gave you a 10-inch pizza, you
wouldn't try to put it all in your mouth at once,
would you? Of course not. You'd cut it up into
bite-size portions. Yet there is often a danger of
expecting our learners to do just that; feeding
them too much information and expecting
them to consume it all without difficulty. The
consumption of information, learning, in other
words, needs to be 'chunked', broken up into
pieces that can be handled easily.
Cognitive Load Theory originated in 1988
when John Sweller, an educational
psychologist at the University of New South
Wales, developed theories around the working
memory. His work showed that learners who
were given too much information, or material
that wasn't always relevant to the learning
objective, got confused, lost interest and
retained very little of it over time.
Working memory can only hold 4-5 pieces of
information at one time (try memorising half a
dozen new phone numbers and then
repeating them fifteen minutes later!) and
information in working memory lasts only
around ten seconds. It's easy to overlook this
vital educational psychology, but we ignore it
at our peril.
The temptation is to cram as much content
into a course because it's what our people
need to know. The secret is to find ways in
which to PROCESS that content. Let's look at
the THREE types of cognitive loads that our
brains try to handle:
Extraneous
This is the information that is imposed on the
learner - it might provide context, relevance,
perhaps even motivation. As the title suggests,
it isn't strictly necessary. It can confuse the
issue and provide too much for people to take
in (like a 10-inch pizza).
Intrinsic
This is the information directly linked to the
learning objective - it's what we want people to
actually learn. We need to be focused on the
detail here. Learning objectives need to identify
exactly what should be consumed. Vague
objectives can inadvertently introduce
extraneous cognitive load if you're not careful.
Germane
This is the creation of processes that consume
the content. These are the chunks. These
processes (psychologists call them 'schemas')
can become automatic when embedded into
the working memory. For instance, the first
time you saw a 10-inch pizza, what did you
do?
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