Transcript
[00:00] Picture this. You’re sitting in a
[00:02] training session. The facilitator has
[00:04] the best intentions in the world. The
[00:07] slides are packed, and I mean absolutely
[00:09] packed. There are bullet points, sub
[00:12] points, a diagram with 12 arrows, a
[00:14] table, and somewhere in the middle of
[00:16] all this, there is a video playing in a
[00:18] popup window while the facilitator is
[00:19] also talking. And you’re sitting there
[00:21] thinking, I have no idea what is
[00:25] happening. I understood the first slide.
[00:27] I think I understood the second one. And
[00:29] now I’m just nodding and hoping nobody
[00:31] asks me a question. Sound familiar? That
[00:34] feeling, that specific sensation of your
[00:36] brain quietly giving up has a name. It’s
[00:39] called cognitive overload. And it is one
[00:42] of the most common reasons that training
[00:44] fails to sick. But here’s the good news.
[00:47] Once you understand what cognitive load
[00:49] actually is, you will never design or
[00:52] sit through a confusing training session
[00:54] in quite the same way again. Hello and
[00:57] welcome to the L & D Academy channel. My
[00:59] name is Zina and in today’s video I want
[01:01] to explain cognitive load theory. What
[01:03] it is, why it matters, and what it
[01:05] actually looks like in practice.
[01:07] Cognitive load is one of those concepts
[01:09] that sounds academic. By the way, it was
[01:12] developed by educational psychologist
[01:14] John Sweller in the 1980s. But once you
[01:17] understand it, you’ll start to see it
[01:19] everywhere. in every training you
[01:21] design, in every meeting you have to sit
[01:23] through, in every onboarding process you
[01:25] have ever experienced. So let’s dive in.
[01:28] What is cognitive load? Here’s the core
[01:31] idea. Your working memory, the part of
[01:33] your brain that actively processes new
[01:36] information, is very, very small. We’re
[01:38] talking about the mental equivalent of a
[01:40] sticky note. Research suggests that we
[01:43] hold roughly anywhere between four to
[01:46] six, maybe even seven pieces of
[01:48] information at any one time. So,
[01:50] cognitive load is the total amount of
[01:53] mental effort being used in your working
[01:55] memory at a given moment. And when that
[01:58] load exceeds what your working memory
[02:00] can handle, that’s when you hit a wall.
[02:03] Information stops being processed.
[02:05] Learning stops happening. And you end up
[02:07] nodding along in a training session,
[02:08] having retained approximately nothing.
[02:11] Think of it like a browser with too many
[02:13] tabs open. Everything slows down. Some
[02:16] tabs stop loading altogether. Your
[02:19] computer is not broken. It’s just
[02:20] overwhelmed. And that is your brain
[02:23] during a poorly designed training
[02:24] program. And the really important thing
[02:26] to understand is this. Cognitive load is
[02:29] not about intelligence. It’s not about
[02:31] how smart your learners are, but it’s
[02:34] rather more about how much your design
[02:36] is asking of their working memory. which
[02:39] means it is entirely within your control
[02:42] as an L & D professional. Now, cognitive
[02:45] low theory actually breaks this down
[02:47] into three types. And this is where it
[02:49] gets really practical because each type
[02:52] requires a different response from you
[02:54] as a designer. Type one, intrinsic load.
[02:57] Intrinsic load is the natural complexity
[03:00] of the subject matter itself. Some
[03:02] topics are just harder than others. That
[03:05] is not a design problem. It is the
[03:07] nature of the content. For example,
[03:09] teaching someone how to say hello in a
[03:11] new language, that’s low intrinsic load.
[03:14] Teaching someone to file a tax return
[03:17] for a multinational corporation, very
[03:19] high intrinsic load. You cannot
[03:22] eliminate intrinsic load. The content is
[03:24] what it is, but you can manage it. You
[03:28] sequence the learning very carefully,
[03:30] starting with the simpler concepts
[03:32] before building to the more complex
[03:34] ones. You chunk information into
[03:36] digestible steps rather than presenting
[03:39] everything all at once and you give your
[03:42] learners time to process and consolidate
[03:45] before you add more. Type two,
[03:47] extraneous load. Extraneous load is the
[03:50] cognitive effort caused by the way the
[03:52] information is presented, not the
[03:54] information itself. This is one that is
[03:57] entirely your fault as a designer. I say
[04:00] that with love, obviously. Extraneous
[04:02] load is everything that makes learning
[04:04] harder without making it more effective.
[04:07] Cluttered slides, inconsistent layouts,
[04:10] jargon that hasn’t been defined. A
[04:12] narrator reading word for word from the
[04:14] text that is already on the screen. So
[04:16] the learner is processing the same
[04:18] information twice through two different
[04:20] channels simultaneously. Here’s a
[04:23] brilliant real life example of
[04:24] extraneous load. You’re following a
[04:26] recipe for the very first time and the
[04:28] recipe says delaze the pan with white
[04:31] wine scraping up the fond then reduce
[04:33] all sake before mounting with cold
[04:35] butter and you’re standing in your
[04:37] kitchen thinking I just wanted to make
[04:39] pasta the cooking process itself not
[04:42] that complicated but the way it has been
[04:44] described extraneous load through the
[04:48] roof a good recipe writer would say pour
[04:51] wine into the hot pan scrape out the
[04:53] brown bits from the bottom cook until
[04:55] almost dry and then stir in cold butter.
[04:58] Same information, a fraction of the
[05:00] cognitive effort. The goal with
[05:02] extraneous load is simple. Eliminate it.
[05:05] Every element in your training that is
[05:07] not directly supporting the learning
[05:09] objective is extraneous load and it
[05:12] needs to go. Type three, germaine load.
[05:16] Germaine load is the cognitive effort
[05:18] involved in actually constructing
[05:20] knowledge, taking new information and
[05:23] connecting it to what you already know.
[05:25] This way, building mental schemas and
[05:27] making meaning. This is the good kind of
[05:29] cognitive load. This is the cognitive
[05:31] work you want learners to be doing.
[05:34] Think about the first time you drove a
[05:36] car. Every single action required
[05:38] conscious effort. Check the mirror
[05:41] signal. Check the mirror again. Release
[05:43] the clutch slowly. Not that slowly. Oh,
[05:45] now the car has stalled. Try again.
[05:46] Check the mirror. All of that was
[05:49] genuinely hard. Your working memory was
[05:52] completely full. But now, well, now you
[05:55] drive home on autopilot while having a
[05:57] full conversation, choosing a podcast to
[05:59] listen to, and mentally planning dinner.
[06:01] You have built a schema. The once
[06:04] conscious actions have become automatic.
[06:07] And that freed up working memory is now
[06:10] available for the conversation, the
[06:12] podcast, and the dinner planning. That
[06:14] process, moving knowledge from effortful
[06:16] working memory to automatic long-term
[06:19] memory is your main load at work. And
[06:22] your job as an L&D designer is to
[06:25] protect the space for it by reducing
[06:28] extraneous load and managing intrinsic
[06:31] load effectively. Let me give you three
[06:33] more examples from real working life
[06:35] because I find this is where cognitive
[06:37] load theory really clicks. Example one,
[06:40] the onboarding program for hell. It is
[06:42] your first day at a new job. By 10:00
[06:44] a.m., you have been given a 47page
[06:47] employee handbook, access to six
[06:49] different software systems, a 90-minute
[06:51] presentation about the company history,
[06:53] a health and safety video, a compliance
[06:55] module, a tour of three different
[06:56] floors, and introduced to approximately
[06:58] 40 people whose names you will
[07:00] absolutely not remember. By lunchtime,
[07:04] you’re exhausted. Not because you’re not
[07:06] capable or stupid, but because your
[07:09] working memory has been completely
[07:11] overwhelmed by an enormous amount of
[07:14] intrinsic load. New systems, new people,
[07:17] new process, new culture with zero
[07:19] opportunity to process and consolidate
[07:22] any of it. A cognitive load informed
[07:25] onboarding program would look completely
[07:28] different. Day one covers only what you
[07:31] genuinely need to know to get through
[07:33] day one. Day two builds on that and so
[07:37] on and by week two you’re adding the
[07:40] more complex layers. The information is
[07:43] the same. The sequence of them pacing
[07:45] are what change and the result is a new
[07:48] starter who actually retain something.
[07:51] Example two, the e-learning module with
[07:53] everything on it. We have all seen this
[07:56] one. An e-learning module opens up with
[07:59] an animated logo, then a progress bar,
[08:01] then a set of objectives in a font that
[08:03] is slightly too small, then a video of a
[08:06] senior leader explaining why this
[08:07] training matters, then a scenario, then
[08:09] a knowledge share, then a drag and drop
[08:11] activity, then more content, then
[08:12] another video, then a reflection
[08:14] question, then a summary, then a final
[08:15] quiz.
[08:17] The instructional designer who built it
[08:19] was trying to be thorough. They included
[08:22] every modality, every type of
[08:24] interaction, every possible engagement
[08:26] strategy. And the result is a module
[08:29] that feels exhausting to complete
[08:31] because the learner’s working memory is
[08:33] constantly being switched between
[08:35] different formats, different tasks, and
[08:37] different types of mental processing.
[08:40] Less is genuinely more. A single clear
[08:44] learning objective, one or two
[08:46] well-chosen formats, a manageable amount
[08:49] of content. That is how you design for
[08:51] cognitive load. Example three, the
[08:54] instruction manual nobody reads. You buy
[08:57] a piece of flat pack furniture. The
[08:59] instruction manual is 16 pages long,
[09:02] written in six languages simultaneously,
[09:04] illustrated with diagrams that look like
[09:06] they were drawn by someone who has never
[09:08] seen furniture and includes a wording on
[09:11] page 14 that you realize you should have
[09:13] read on page two. Nobody reads this
[09:16] manual properly. Not because people are
[09:18] lazy, but because the extraneous load,
[09:21] the poor layout, the unclear sequencing,
[09:23] the six language format, the missing
[09:26] labels, it all makes it a cognitively
[09:28] harder to follow the instructions than
[09:30] to just look at the pieces and try to
[09:32] figure it out yourself. Now, compare
[09:35] that to the IKEA instructions. No words
[09:37] at all, just clear sequence diagrams,
[09:40] one step at a time. extraneous load
[09:43] almost completely eliminated. Which is
[09:45] why IKEA furniture frustrating as it
[09:48] sometimes is at least gets built. So why
[09:51] should this matter to you as an LD
[09:53] professional? Because almost every
[09:55] training failure I have seen in my
[09:57] career, the session that fell flat, the
[10:00] e-learning nobody finished, the workshop
[10:02] that got great smile sheets but zero
[10:04] behavioral change had cognitive load at
[10:07] the root of it. Not because the content
[10:09] was wrong, not because the learners were
[10:11] not motivated, but because the design
[10:14] asked too much of working memory in the
[10:17] wrong order with too much noise around
[10:19] the signal. When you design with
[10:21] cognitive load in mind, you start asking
[10:23] different questions. Not just, have I
[10:26] covered everything, but how much am I
[10:28] asking learners to hold in their heads
[10:30] at once? Not just is this content
[10:33] accurate, but is this the right moment
[10:36] in the sequence to introduce this
[10:38] concept? Not just is this light visually
[10:41] interesting, but is every element on
[10:43] this light earning its place or is some
[10:46] of it just adding noise? Those questions
[10:49] change the quality of what you produce
[10:52] every time. So, what is cognitive load?
[10:55] It is the total mental effort your
[10:57] working memory is carrying at any given
[10:59] moment. Too much of it and learning
[11:02] breaks down. The right amount of it well
[11:04] managed, well sequenced, stripped of any
[11:06] unnecessary noise and the learning
[11:08] happens effectively. Intrinsic load is
[11:11] the complexity of the content. You
[11:13] manage it through sequencing and
[11:15] chunking. Extraneous load is the noise
[11:17] created by poor design. You eliminate
[11:20] it. And germaine load is the good
[11:22] cognitive work of building real
[11:25] understanding. You protect the space for
[11:27] it. And next time you find yourself in a
[11:30] training session staring at a slide with
[11:32] 12 bullet points and three animated
[11:34] diagrams all playing simultaneously, you
[11:36] will know exactly what is happening.
[11:38] Your working memory is full. The sticky
[11:41] note is overflowing. The browser has had
[11:44] too many tabs open. And if you’re the
[11:46] one designing that training, well, now
[11:49] you know what to do differently. If you
[11:51] found this useful, please give it a like
[11:53] and consider subscribing. Thanks for
[11:54] watching and I’ll see you in the next