My son went to Kindergarten this year. He’s doing all the things I figured he would: math, reading, gym, music, art, recess, and the library. Once upon a time, I was a substitute teacher in K-12, and so I had a passing familiarity with kids’ worksheets. But this is the first time I have been a parent of a school-age child. Suddenly those worksheets he brings home are vastly more interesting to me. Looking over the exercises, I am reminded of the importance of the presentation of information; that is, how the instruction is designed for his developing brain to grasp what are sometimes difficult concepts, without making the tasks seemingly too difficult for him. We have all heard someone tell us to “take it slowly” when we are learning something new, or to make “baby steps” toward completing a larger goal. In a nutshell, these are some of the basic concepts in Cognitive Load Theory.

Cognitive Load Theory (Paas, 2003) asserts that every mental task requires a certain amount of processing power from our brains. It is possible to overload our brains with information, and then the processing of information suffers; it’s much like trying to drink from a fire hose. Yeah, you’ll get some water, but a whole lot won’t be going anywhere near your mouth. It is also possible to underload our brains as well. If there is very little information covered, or if it is not presented in a way that can engage the mind, the learner does not store the information as well. Obviously, this theory is striving for a middle ground, balancing maximum retention with minimal effort to achieve it. Cognitive Load Theory seeks to minimize the “noise,” the extraneous information, and maximize the information germane to the topic. There are three main types of load as named by CLT:

Intrinsic Load refers to the nature of the material itself, and its complexity. Complexity in this case mostly refers to the interactivity of the content with other elements. An activity said to have low element interactivity can stand alone, such as the recall of facts. On the other hand, most conceptual knowledge requires high element activity, as it often requires several elements to work in conjunction with one another.

Extraneous Load is all of the non-essential information that learners must ignore or actively avoid in order to increase comprehension. For example, confusing layouts may result in learners wasting time figuring out how to use the resource; background music or animations in a lecture video can distract from the actual content; and using numerous fonts in a document can slow down a reader who is trying to contextualize and store information.

Germane Load is the information most essential to developing lasting content knowledge. This is the optimal type of cognitive load to be working toward, and the more we can organize the information into useful pieces through visual or text techniques, proper sequencing and chunking of content.

Here’s an example of a Kindergarten math worksheet for numbers up to 5:

The directions are simple enough to be read by a beginner, and the design of the sheet encourages students to chunk information by creating their own groupings and counting. The germane load is increased by having the boxes at the bottom, so students get integrated practice in counting and writing. There is almost nothing on the sheet that isn’t part of the exercise, so there is very little extraneous noise at all.

Here’s an example of a sentence writing worksheet:

This worksheet has some slightly more difficult directions, but they are still simple enough that beginning readers can understand with help. It asks students to play with the words and to come up with the order of words in the sentence. An accompanying image increases the germane load, as students can analyze the picture and make inferences as to the meaning of the sentence. It also provides a model for students to copy when they are doing handwriting practice, minimizing the load of having to memorize the spelling of each word. Finally, the box structure of the sentence allows students to see conventions like capitalization and syntax in the context of building blocks separately, rather than simply writing a sentence from beginning to end.

Both worksheets are black and white, which don’t have any effect on the cognitive load versus being in color specifically, but they offer the student an opportunity to take a break and color to break up the activities into smaller sequences, a chunking activity that can help increase transfer into long-term memory.

We’ve grown up hearing ads and statements like, “So simple, even a child could do it!” and “You can do it with your eyes closed!” While most of the activities discussed would not actually be things we’d want our children to do, it is an important rule of thumb to follow: try to make the instruction you will deliver as simple as possible, so your audience will have better retention.  According to the principles we’ve just discussed, here is your short list to maximize the cognitive load potential of your exercise:

1. Keep text and illustrations to a minimum, especially if they are not related to the topic.
2. “Chunk” related blocks of information and concepts together to increase transfer and retention.
3. Organize content to maximize readability by using few fonts, and making use of headings to offset important concepts.
4. Aid students in developing mental schema to remember by presenting information in a logical, sequenced order.

Remember, it doesn’t have to be difficult-looking in order to illustrate a difficult concept. If you can make the concept simple enough for a child to grasp and retain the knowledge, you should have no problem with your college students.

In short:

(Information) + (schema and chunking) – (extraneous noise) = Increased germane load.

Organize your material for easy retention and minimize distractions, and you’ll hit your target every time. And yes, sometimes a child really can do it.

Bibliography

Paas, F., Renkl, A., & Sweller, J. (2003). Cognitive load theory and Instructional design: Recent developments. Educational Psychologist, 38(1), 1-4.