Implications of Limited Capacity

• Capacity to take in information is limited
• Extraneous, essential, and generative processing combine to create a cognite load
• Too much extraneous information unrelated to learning goals interferes with essential and generative processing.
• Too much essential information (too much or too complex to easily process) can interfere with generative or deep processing
• Learners sometimes do not process the information more deeply with generative processing
• Learning can be improved by:
  • Reducing extraneous processing
  • Managing essential processing
  • Fostering generative processing

Reducing Extraneous Processing

• Coherence: Learners perform better when extranous material is excluded
  • Excluding interesting but irrelevant images and words
  • Excluding interesting but irrelevant sounds and music
  • Excluding unneeded symbols and words
• Signaling: Learners perform better when cues show the structure of the lesson and highlight what is important
• Redundancy: 
• Spatial contiguity
• Temporal contiguity

Managing Essential Processing

• Segmenting
• Pretraining
• Modality

Fostering Generative Processing

• Multimedia
• Personalization
• Voice