Summary

To read the theory itself as well as additional related articles, click here.

Cognitive Load Theory is based in cognitive science and rests upon five pillars. These make up what Oliver Lovell cleverly calls the "A, B, C (D, E!)" of CLT.

• Architecture

  • • We think using a combination of information from the environment (unlimited), long-term memory (unlimited) and our working memory (limited). We can overcome our limited working memories by chunking information, storing it in long-term memory and automatizing it.

• Biology

  • • The distinction between biologically primary knowledge (that which is easily and naturally acquired) and biologically secondary knowledge (that which is acquired with difficulty) is important in that it implies, what is taught in schools ought to be the latter.

• Categorization

  • • Cognitive load can be categorized as either intrinsic or extraneous. Intrinsic load refers to the inherent difficulty of the task itself while extraneous load refers to the additional complication caused by the environment. The key idea of CLT is to minimize extraneous load and optimize intrinsic load.

• Domains

  • • Skills are domain general or domain specific. Domain general skills are biologically primary (one cannot teach general creativity or general problem solving). Instead, we gain expertise in specific domains (i.e. creative-writer, creative-musician, etc.) and this expertise is gained by increasing our domain specific knowledge.

• Element interactivity

  • • Whether a learner finds the material to be learned hard or easy depends on their prior knowledge as well as the number of elements in a given task and the amount of interactivity between these elements. We manipulate the intrinsic interacting elements with good curricular sequencing and we minimize extraneous interacting elements with good instructional design.