Friday, March 1, 2019

Cognitive Load Theory: An Update


Regular readers of my blog will know of my interest in Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), particularly where it relates to designing learning materials, activities and experiences. Three stalwarts in the field who have contributed significantly to CLT recently wrote a “twenty-year update”. Here’s a snapshot of the title, DOI and abstract.


CLT was described in detail thirty years ago by Sweller, and ten years later the fledging theory had gathered an impressive set of initial data resulting in a significant review by the same three authors in 1998. Since then CLT has matured as a theory, and in my opinion, detractors’ early criticisms have been answered with data from increasingly improved studies.

Most of the present 2019 article discusses “Developments in Cognitive Load Theory 1998-2018”. Of these developments, the most important in my opinion has been the meshing of CLT with Geary’s categorization of biologically primary and secondary knowledge. I’ve written about Geary’s article in this blog, and it has been one of the most influential articles in changing the way I think about learning. Geary’s article is a hundred pages long but it’s well worth the read. It explains why, according to Sweller and co-authors, “over the last few decades, many educationists, correctly realizing the importance of [generic-cognitive] skills, have advocated that they be taught. Such campaigns tend to fail, not because the skills are unimportant but because they are of such importance to humans that we have evolved to acquire them automatically without instruction.”

Thanks to Geary’s article, every time I hear someone mention teaching generic critical thinking skills, alarm bells go off in my head. You need to know a fair bit of content within a subject area to be able to think critically about it – but this requires first the hard work of learning that content. The evidence for “far transfer” of generic critical thinking skills in well-designed studies is practically non-existent. We’d like to think that such a thing would be the panacea for a new and improved education, but the evidence is simply not there.

Reading the 2019 paper reminded me to look into four-component instructional design (4C/ID). Last year I read a short 10-page article describing the basics. They make sense to me, but it also seems like a lot of trouble to redesign my chemistry courses from scratch according to 4C/ID so I put it aside. With my sabbatical coming up, and part of my proposal was to consider how to use CLT to improve teaching and curricular design in my field, I think I will be revisiting this. I’ve put in an order for the 3rd edition of Ten Steps to Complex Learning. We’ll see how much time I’m able to devote to this. I have three divergent sabbatical projects because I like to work on different things and be able to shift my attention when I get stuck on one project. This is project #3 with third priority.

One of the main difficulties with CLT is how to measure the load. The article acknowledges this and provides some references that I plan to follow-up on. There’s still much to do in this area, although I’m not sure I’m the right person with the right priorities and expertise to do so. Looking ahead, the authors also describe some interesting ongoing areas of research in CLT. One that I found interesting was the study on working memory and how it can be “depleted after a period of sustained cognitive exertion resulting in a reduced capacity to commit further resources”. It reminded me of a discussion I was having with a colleague of how G-Chem 2 feels much more challenging for the students and the instructor when meeting two days a week on TuTh (for 1.5 hours each) versus three days a week (1 hour each) on a MWF schedule.

Thanks to this article, I’ve downloaded at least five other articles now queued in my reading list. Reading something begets more reading begets more reading. I suppose that’s what going down the rabbit hole is like. And I do enjoy learning!

Besides the Geary article, here’s a selection of my other blog posts about CLT.

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