Design of learning material

Fundamental to this theory is the assumption that working memory only has a limited capacity and that capacity is always required for learning.  A distinction is made between three cognitive loads that the working memory has to deal with.

Literature: Niegemann, 2008, p. 45-48

The basic assumption is that learning material consisting of different media promotes learning - you learn better with words and pictures than with just words or just pictures. But it's not quite as simple as that - randomly adding illustrations to a written text does not guarantee learning success. Various principles must be observed. Similar to cognitive load theory, the limited capacity of the two processing channels (visual and auditory) in working memory must be taken into account (Niegemann, pp. 49-54).

Many people are familiar with worked examples from school math books. Why are such worked examples helpful? Learning is often about solving problems by applying knowledge. With worked examples, a learner can first concentrate on understanding the solution rather than immediately applying the knowledge themselves and searching for a solution without help. The latter would require a lot of capacity in the working memory (Niegemann, 2008, p. 47).

This effect should be avoided because it ties up resources in the working memory unnecessarily. The effect always occurs when visually related information is not spatially close together (Niegemann, 2008, p. 47).

Examples:

• A diagram or a table that is only referred to on the next page.
  Why is this disadvantageous? You have to turn the page when reading the text explanation. Attention is divided between two pages.
• A chorus of notes in which the next verse is not written directly under the notes, but under the entire set of notes.
  Why is this disadvantageous? The singers have to read the notes and the text, which is written in two different places, at the same time. The effect is then less pronounced if there is prior knowledge. If the melody or the text is known, it is possible to concentrate on one piece of information presented.
• A construction manual in which the components in the instructions are labeled A-Z, but the components themselves are not.
  Why is this disadvantageous? The components must first be labouriously sorted and the information component A, component B must be remembered and then brought together in the right place in the instructions.

Scripts often include a written explanation of an illustration. For people with little prior knowledge of a topic, the visual channel can be overloaded even though the learning material is multimedia - both text and images have to be processed visually. This can be remedied by spoken text, e.g. a short video clip (Niegemann, 2008, p.47f.).

This effect occurs when information is redundant and depends on your own prior knowledge. Anyone who has ever watched films or video clips in a foreign language will agree - with subtitles, more information is retained, especially if you are not quite so familiar with the foreign language. If you switch on subtitles for videos in your own native language, the redundancy effect would come into play for people without visual impairment - what you hear would have to be read at the same time and would therefore also overload your working memory (Niegemann, 2008, p. 48).

This is the effect that occurs when people with a lot of prior knowledge, i.e. quasi experts, would use learning material that is designed for people with little or no prior knowledge: worked examples, graphics with written explanations and much more can then be superfluous, as the knowledge is already available to understand a graphic without an explanation or to tackle a problem without help to solve it (Niegemann, 2008, p. 48).

A funny cat picture here, an interesting anecdote about a scientist there: teaching content can be dry and exhausting, so what could be better than loosening things up a bit? To a certain extent, there is nothing wrong with this, but you should be aware of the so-called "coherence principle": Unnecessary decorative images and things from the "useless knowledge" category (which don't really have anything to do with the learning content) are not conducive to learning. Both can have a distracting effect and cognitively overload the working memory (Niegemann, 2008, p. 231).

• Mayer, R. E. (2014). The Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning (Second edition). Cambridge handbooks in psychology. Cambridge University Press.
• Niegemann, H., Domgak, S., Hessel, S., Hein, A., Hupfer, M., & Zobel, A. (2008). Kompendium Multimediales Lernen. X.media.press. Springer.
• Sweller, J., & Chandler, P. (1991). Evidence for cognitive load theory. Cognition and Instruction, 8(4), 351−362.