At a recent retreat with the Curriculum and Instructional Design group at CDL, we were put into four small groups for a team building exercise. The goal of the exercise was to develop a timeline for our escape from a crumbling island.
The basic premise was that a remote island we had lived on for some time was disintegrating as we stood on it, and it would be completely gone in 3 months. We had unlimited resources, money, and expertise at our disposal.
In about 30 minutes, my group developed a timeline that described a series of steps for the creation, build and testing of a boat that we would then produce, en masse, to hold and safely transport our general population (assumed and hypothetical) to safety. Not knowing how long we would be at sea, we made sure to leave time for lots (and lots) of testing, both during and after the actual build of the boats. We decided to develop and design our plan in days, rather than months or weeks.
After returning from working in our small groups, the larger team reconvened to share their timelines and then take a vote as to which was best. My group lost, abysmally. It was discouraging, after assuming that our plan was superior because it was the only plan presented that not only left time for the selection of a boat prototype, but also enough time to test, and re-test, allowing retrofits and all sorts of improvements to take place before our island disappeared.
What I learned from the feedback after the vote was that our plan HAD been the best, in that it was thoughtful, thorough, and detailed, but no one picked it because... it was so thoughtful, thorough, and detailed. Confused? I was, too.
We had a discussion about the role of Cognitive Load Theory in this exercise. Cognitive Load Theory is based on the premise that our long-term memory is limited in terms of the amount of information it can hold, and that has a direct impact on our working memory, or, our ability to learn effectively.
This relationship between long-term memory and working memory is a key part of our cognitive ability. So the learner, in this case, my colleagues, can only take on and retain a certain amount of new information at a time (intrinsic load). When that information is more complex - like the varied and many details we presented in a really short period of time - less of it can be processed and retained.
So, from an instructional design point of view, our group's timeline held too much (extraneous) cognitive load for those in our audience. The fact that our plan was so detailed was its very failure: It was too complex and too compressed to be meaningful to our audience (germane cognition). Our audience lost track of what we were saying, then they lost interest, and then they voted it down. Ours was a good plan with poor presentation.
This is common pitfall for instructional designers, who, however skilled and well-meaning, can try and fail at conveying information in an effective way when they forget the basic premise of cognitive theories like this one. Every learner is different, but the human brain has been shown to be fairly consistent in terms of its capabilities in this context. Memory and meaningful learning have a direct relationship (with each other, and our role is to understand that relationship and enhance it (Ayres, 2006).
References:
Ayres, P. (2006). UNSW, 2006. Cognitive load theory at UNSW. Sydney, Australia: University of New South Wales (UNSW).
Chipperfield, B. (2006). Cognitive Load Theory and Instructional Design
Saskatoon. Saskatchewan, Canada: University of Saskatchewan (USASK)
