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

Limited Capacity Presentation (draft)

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: Learners perform better with graphics and narration than graphics, narration, and printed text
• Spatial contiguity: Learners perform better when relevant text is near the corresponding image
• Temporal contiguity: Learners perform better when words are presented with the image simultaneously

Managing Essential Processing

• Segmenting: Learners perform better when information is broken up into parts
  • Complex information is best broken up into parts
  • Learners perform better when they control the pace
• Pretraining: People learn more deeply when they know key definitions and concepts before hand
• Modality: Learners perform better when images are presented along with the spoken word rather than printed text

Fostering Generative Processing

• Multimedia
• Personalization
• Voice