Cognitive Load is the effort needed for mental processing. Richard Mayer presents a three-step model towards successful learning: sensory memory (initial perception), working memory (data processor and organizer), and long-term memory (storage unit). Educators and designers are most concerned with working memory, which as Mayer asserts, is limited in capacity. It is important to maximize a learner's ability to process the information, and reduce the extraneous cognitive load, or the unnecessary elements that may detract from reaching optimal results.
Mayer offers a few principles to reduce extraneous cognitive load in multimedia learning:
Prior Knowledge Principle- individuals learn better when they are already familiar with or are introduced to the learning goal at hand.
Coherence Principle- individuals learn, retain, and transfer better when the lesson is free of extraneous words, pictures, and sounds.
Segmentation Principle- individuals learn and transfer better when the lesson is broken up into segments, rather than longer continuous spans.
Redundancy Principle- individuals learn, retain, and transfer better with narration and animation, versus on-screen text, narration and animation
In order to reduce extraneous load and maximize learning, VideoPals strategically incorporates pretraining, signaling, and redundancy reduction in its design. The site aims to be a vehicle for education; the site itself should not create debilitating cognitive load that may impede on learning. To maximize site and technology use, pretraining or initial tutorials will guide and acclimate new users through the VideoPals site. Signaling will also help the user to make the appropriate actions throughout the learning process. Navigation will be simple and will weed out redundancies.
1 comment:
I always questioned about this reducing cognitive load principles. I guess I started questioning since cogsci1 class.
I understand that our mind has a limit and for better learning the material shouldn't be overloaded with things to learn. But I think that do those principles really work? because as Reneta said in the class, his research was done by psychology students...it was a very limiting research.
I sometime think like, it may be better if there's text and animation going on because in that case, people can understand better by reading it and hearing it.
Post a Comment