Tim Belmont Visual Vocabulary
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Thursday, September 30, 2010
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Information Overload: Cognitive Load Theory
Cognitive Load Theory is an idea that I happen to vehemently agree with. In education, this theory basically states that the more students need to learn in a short amount of time, the more difficult it is for them to retain the information. Cognitive Load Theory takes into account the student's working memory and promotes building upon prior knowledge in manageable chunks. If a student is experiencing heavy cognitive load, they may fail to retain information or make an error.
This can be applied to many aspects of education, but it becomes extremely relevant when dealing with instructional resources. In a PowerPoint, for example, putting an extremely large amount of text on a single slide may be too much cognitive load for a student to handle. It is important to split up slides into manageable portions, and have the slides build upon each other, to promote retention of information. Cognitive Load Theory also promotes the teaching of relevant and essential information, and avoiding unnecessary material. In a PowerPoint, this may include irrelevant graphics to add 'pizazz' to a presentation, or distracting colors.
In the most basic sense, Cognitive Load Theory asks educators to keep it simple. There is a lot of knowledge for students to learn, but unless it is displayed in a practical and manageable fashion, it will not be retained.
This can be applied to many aspects of education, but it becomes extremely relevant when dealing with instructional resources. In a PowerPoint, for example, putting an extremely large amount of text on a single slide may be too much cognitive load for a student to handle. It is important to split up slides into manageable portions, and have the slides build upon each other, to promote retention of information. Cognitive Load Theory also promotes the teaching of relevant and essential information, and avoiding unnecessary material. In a PowerPoint, this may include irrelevant graphics to add 'pizazz' to a presentation, or distracting colors.In the most basic sense, Cognitive Load Theory asks educators to keep it simple. There is a lot of knowledge for students to learn, but unless it is displayed in a practical and manageable fashion, it will not be retained.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
This Is The Title
Hey. This is my first blog post on this blog. Pretty awesome, right? Sounds great.
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