Sweller's Principles and Guidelines for Instructional Design
Examples to eliminate unnecessary cognitive load
E-Learning
Mathematics
100
This type of cognitive load has to do with the design of the lesson. The teacher has the most control over this and can eliminate extra, unnecessary information.
What is extraneous load?
100
This type of problem allows the learner to not focus on the goal but be forced to use the given information.
What is a goal-free problem?
100
Breaking up material into smaller, more easily managed pieces.
What is chunking?
100
This is a person who is just beginning his or her training.
What is a novice?
100
These along with practice have improved mathematics learning.
What are worked examples?
200
This type of cognitive load is due to the difficulty of the task or problem to solve. The instructor has no control over this but can make the task less overwhelming by breaking it up into smaller, simpler pieces.
What is intrinsic load?
200
These help diminish cognitive load and improve comprehension. They should be followed by a similar, unresolved problem.
What are worked examples?
200
This effect causes the learner to look back and forth between two sources of information and causes the learner excess cognitive load. This can be alleviated by putting the information together in the same place.
What is split attention?
200
This is a person who can move from simple tasks to more complex, problem solving tasks on his or her own.
What is expert?
200
This type of instruction is thought to help alleviate cognitive load caused by inquiry based instruction.
What is direct instruction?
300
This type of cognitive load is often related to motivation or interest.
What is germane load?
300
This occurs when information is presented more than once and learners must process the same information in different ways.
What is redundancy effect?
300
Instead of making the training into one, big session, instructors can break the training into these to make it more manageable.
What are modules?
300
This is the presenter speaking about the slide he or she is presenting. This should be done as a summary of the slide rather than reading the slide word for word.
What is narration?
300
When learning mathematics, research says that students should develop understanding of a subject before creating these in their long-term memory.
What are schemas?
400
This is the type of memory that is limited as to how much it can hold at one time and is the reason for cognitive overload. This memory requires conscious thought.
What is working memory?
400
This effect explains that as expertise is obtained, learners should be less guided in their exercises.
What is guidance fading effect?
400
This is material that is only there for interest or decoration and should be removed in favor of a simpler design.
What is extraneous material?
400
When using these to help explain a topic, words should be placed very closely so that the learner does not have to split his or her attention.
What are graphics?
400
This measures the validity of a score received based on whether the question contained information irrelevant to what the instructor wanted the student to show from his or her learning.
What is test score validity?
500
This is the type of memory that holds schemas, so the the learner can do tasks subconsciously.
What is long-term memory?
500
This is the idea that people learn best with both words and pictures as long as the pictures are not self explanatory.
What is multimedia effect?
500
When a learner developes one of these, the task can be removed from working memory and can be switched to automation.
What is schema?
500
This is the information processing channel that learners use to process auditory information.
What is verbal?
500
When designing questions in mathematics, this type of cognitive load can greatly effect the learner's ability to show what he or she has learned because of too many distracting, unnecessary components.