R/D12

I really enjoyed this chapter because it seemed to be the most relevant to me. I actually thought it was an easier read than some of the others since it was clear, concise, and interesting.

First of all, I would have liked to see more details about the working memory limit of “seven plus or minus two chunks,” so I could better understand how exactly a chunk is defined. I have heard about it before, but it has been so long I have forgotten the details. I am interested in learning more about how to evaluate cognitive load and how instruction might be modified to fit an individual’s assessment.

The second portion of the reading that stuck out to me was the cognitive processes of learning (the first four in particular) on page 315. It began with attention. Because of the limited capacity of working memory, it is best to focus the learner’s attention on what is relevant. I had not thought about the theory behind it before, but when I design software tutorials in Camtasia, I try to use features such as zooming in, highlighting, and darkening the unnecessary information to minimize the extraneous information. I believe that the zooming in and darkening in particular work very well in improving the quality of a tutorial.

Following attention in the list of cognitive processes was activation of prior knowledge. Although it is common sense, I had not really given much thought to the fact that “the more related knowledge that is stored in long-term memory, the larger chunks working memory can absorb” (314). Applying this to software tutorials, they would be more effective if they incorporated a pre-assessment to help determine the level of instruction that is appropriate for the learner. This would help the advanced learner by eliminating superfluous information in instruction and thus better maintaining the learner’s attention. It would also help the lower-level learner by differentiating instruction in order to avoid cognitive overload.

After that came encoding, which is simply a process of linking the prior knowledge stored in long-term memory to the new knowledge presented in the lesson. As stated before, the more prior knowledge that is stored, the larger the amount of information that can be absorbed.

Next was transfer of learning. This is the process of indexing information in the long-term memory so that it can efficiently be retrieved in the future (positive transfer). Right now in my district, we are implementing an instructional strategy called Thinking Maps. This strategy focuses on using a set of eight concrete visual patterns that represent all the different types of cognitive processes (e.g. compare/contrast, classify, cause and effect, sequencing) to support learning. In other words, visualizing our thinking helps in the process of creating a concrete image from abstract thoughts to aid in indexing what goes into our long-term memory.

This concept ties into a third key concept that stood out in the reading, the Modality Principle, which states that students learn better from animation and narration than from animation and on-screen text. This is supported by Dual-Coding Theory, the foundation of Thinking Maps, which says that “knowledge is stored in two forms: linguistically and non-linguistically. Research proves that the more we use both systems of representation, the better we are able to think and recall knowledge.” Another interesting fact (that I found in Eric Jensen’s “Brain Based Learning”) is that 80% of all information that comes into our brain is visual. However, as the book says, we can reduce the load on the visual/pictorial channel by presenting words in audio form rather than text. I have found this to be true based on the feedback that I have received on some of my Camtasia tutorials. My co-workers have liked it better when narration was provided as opposed to text boxes that would appear during the tutorial. This reaction supports the Modality Principle.

I found the rest of the information and theory presented in this chapter to be helpful as well. The fact that these are concepts that I could apply to instructional design right away made this chapter an enjoyable read.