Why Should I Care About Cognitive Load?

 In my experience teaching children to read, I’ve seen a child work so hard to decode each word that, by the end of a sentence, they have little attention left for what it means. The child is reading the words—but may not yet be able to tell you what happened in the story.

That experience stays with me when I think about teaching in Higher Ed. Have you ever watched a capable student struggle with an assignment and wondered: Is the material too hard, or have I made the path to it too hard?

That’s why I care about cognitive load. Students can only process so much new information at once. Some mental effort is essential to learning; some gets in its way.

Consider a student preparing to analyze a research article:

• Intrinsic load is the genuine difficulty of interpreting the methods and findings. That challenge belongs in the course.
• Extraneous load is searching three LMS pages to find the current assignment directions. That challenge does not.
• Germane load is connecting the article’s findings to a concept studied last week. That effort helps the student build understanding

Caring about cognitive load does not mean making college easy. It means deciding where students’ effort should go. We can prepare them for complex work, remove avoidable confusion, and give them opportunities to connect and apply what they learn.

In a 100% online asynchronous course, this is especially important: a student who cannot tell what to do next cannot always ask a question and keep moving. Clear directions and a predictable course layout are not substitutes for intellectual rigor. They help students reach it.

Here’s my challenge: Look at one module in a course you are currently teaching. Where are students working hard because the learning is demanding—and where are they working hard because the course is? Better yet, ask a colleague from a different department to look at your module and ask the same questions. Then, fix one obstacle that doesn’t need to be there.