This website is a sharing of research found while completing a research paper for Ed6590, Research and Development Seminar in Information Technology in Education, for the Masters of Education (Information Technology) degree at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Although all distance education courses are different, the instructional methods depend upon subject material.
Well-structured domains have a structure, with material moving from the simple to the complex and a finite number of correct answers to any question. In mathematics, you must be able to add, square numbers and calculate square roots, before you can solve Pythagoras' theorem. Distance education in well-structured domains uses cognitivism - knowledge is broken into chunks for efficient learning and scaffolding is created to minimize extraneous information for the learner during the learning process.
Ill-structured domains can have some structure, but all topics are of equal importance and no single correct answer to any question. The correct answer depends upon the perspective of the learner with no definitive answer for all learners. In education, learners need to know how to form learning objectives, but individualized instruction can be taken independently from group instruction, although there will be significant overlap in the topics. Distance education in ill-structured domains uses constructivism - real world tasks with minimal guidance with readings, open-ended questions, discussion via computer-mediated communications (CMC) and reports and/or projects.
Cognitivists feel that constructivism causes cognitive overload in novice learners as the search for answers, with minimal guidance, forces learners to overload their working memory with little transfer to long-term memory and creating weak problem-solving skills.
This paper attempts to answer the question: "What impact does cognitive load have on learning in distance education using constructivism?" by examining what the educational research says about the cognitive load of learners in constructivist-based distance education and identifying strategies used to minimize cognitive load.
Constructivists believe that knowledge cannot be transferred, but must be constructed by the learner from their own experiences. Constructivism has two components:
Learners use socially-oriented constructivism as they challenge, discuss and seek consensus with the answers from other learners.
Cognivitists believe working memory is limited to seven unique pieces of information, with operation on two to four pieces at a time, held for 20 seconds unless refreshed by rehearsal. Working memory must be transferred to long-term memory or lost. So working memory is severely limited in capacity during learning (transfer from working memory to long-term memory), but largely unlimited during recall (transfer from long-term memory to working memory).
Cognitive Load Theory is a methodology to design instruction to minimize the cognitive load during learning. There are three components:
Information overload is the point at which a learner’s capacity of working memory is exceeded, and the excessive information and stimuli from the CMC learning environment interfere with content learning. Information overload can be caused by:
High cognitive load is expected as learners learn how to use technology or the learning environment, but this load should decrease as learners become comfortable throughout the course.
To minimize cognitive load, instructional designers should keep the learning environment as simple and visually clean as possible.
A certain amount of cognitive load is expected as learners seek to understand learning tasks, but ambiguous or non-existing directions and errors can cause increased cognitive load.
To minimize cognitive load, instructional designers should provide clear instructions.
All information the learners must process (instructions, readings, websites, discussions) is text, so large volumes of text can cause cognitive overload in learners. Learners may have to read academic readings a number of times to achieve understanding.
To minimize cognitive load, instructional designers should limit readings to core readings.
A lot of studies identified lack of relevant prior knowledge as a problem for learners.
Cognitive Load Theory says recall is fast and unlimited, so relevant experience means less cognitive load on the learner. But learning is slow and limited, so learners with less relevant experience will have a heavier cognitive load.
Novices will struggle to find meaning because they have no long-term memories in place and everything is new.
A lot of studies found CMC had a large quantity of discussion and/or a low quality of or irrelevant discussion.
As the quantity of discussion increases, the quality of discussion decreases. Learners use their long-term memories to decrease their cognitive overload, regardless of relevancy.
Learners' strategies to deal with information overload caused by discussions include:
This behavior can be explained by Cognitive Load Theory (recall is unlimited and fast; learning is limited and slow). As cognitive load increases, learners scan discussions for relevant prior knowledge. They process the messages on a surface level, looking for phrases they recognize. Once they find a phrase, they post a simple reply or a large message, which they consider to be their contribution to the discussions. It is irrelevant to them that their posting had very little to do with the discussion. They completed their part with very little mental investment.
CMC is not true discussion. Problems include:
Learning environment strategies attempt to change the learning environment to minimize cognitive load. The drawback is that these strategies do not address the two uncontrollable sources of cognitive overload: lack of prior knowledge and discussion volume.
Although printed materials may have benefits, cognitive load is increased as the learner must keep track of the materials.
The problem with question elaboration and goal instructions is learners must have prior knowledge for any benefits.
Role based discussion may marginally decrease cognitive load as learners process information to fulfill their roles.
Placing discussions near the topic being discussed or providing different boards for each reading may marginally decrease cognitive load due to framing the discussion.
Enhanced CMC will not decrease cognitive load since the number of discussion messages will not decrease.
The instructor ('guide at the side') has a role in the constructivist learning environment. By providing just-in-time feedback, especially at the start of a course, the instructor can guide the learner in the right direction.
A big part of the poor quality and large quantity discussion is due to instructors not laying down clear guidelines and rules of posting messages, replying to messages, length of messages, and the deadline of each discussion forum.
One way to decrease the number of discussion messages learners must process is to split the class into groups.
Group size is an important component in decreasing cognitive load since learners have to process a smaller number of messages. The quality of discussions should be better as each learner has a greater opportunity to construct knowledge.
Individuals with experience can steer novices. By distributing the experience pool across the groups and designing learning tasks that will interest all group members, the cognitive load on each individual will decrease as each member finds a role they are comfortable with.
The two main reasons for cognitive load are:
The theme ‘More is Less or Less is More’ permeates the research.
To minimize the impact of cognitive load on constructivism, instructional designers should:
The existing research supports the position of the cognitivists. Cognitive load has a major negative impact on the quality of discussion. If the quality of discussion is poor or missing, does socially-oriented constructivism exist? If socially-oriented constructivism does not exist, can constructivism work? Learners are left with cognitively-oriented constructivism and novice learners, with little prior knowledge and minimal guidance, must struggle to find meaning when everything is new.
The actual research paper is located here.