11 Strategies for Reducing Cognitive Overload
- Introduce New Content with Video – Support students’ understanding of what is to be learned. Use videos from Youtube Learning, Khan Academy, and MIT Opencourseware. Also, ECU students, staff and faculty have access to lynda.com, an online library of instructional videos teaching the latest software tools and skills.
- No Scrolling – If possible, keep information about a subject on one handout page, one slide, or one screen.
- Eliminate the Redundancy Effect – Don’t add text to a slide when the visual is self explanatory. Don’t read a text-heavy slide word for word. (Source: Elliott, Kurz, Beddow, & Frey, 2009).
- Frontload Vocabulary – Provide definitions of difficult vocabulary before learners begin reading.
- Highlight Important Content – On handouts, use bold font for key terms. When presenting, say, “This next idea is a critical concept to remember.”
- Provide an Advance Organizer – These can be in the form of a graphic organizer, concept map, narrative, timeline, outline, or analogy.
- Demonstrate Complex Problems – To help students with difficult procedures, show a worked example or partially worked example.
- Deliver it Slow, Chop it Down – If the information is complex, reduce the amount of content and slow your pace.
- Tell a Story – Narratives make lectures memorable.
- Apply the Modality Effect – Present “information in two ways — for example, by showing an image and talking about it.” (Source: Petra J. Lewis)
- Chunk into Categories – Break content into smaller categories. For example, “The American & French Revolutions could have similarties & differences … Specific topics could have paired problems & solutions.” (Source: DateWORKS)
