COGNITIVE ARCHITECTURE AND INSTRUCTIONAL-DESIGN

Cognitive load theory has been designed to provide guidelines intended to assist in the presentation of information in a manner that encoura ges learner activities that optimize intellectual performance. The the ory assumes a limited capacity working memory that includes partially independent subcomponents to deal with auditory/verbal material and vi sual/2- or S-dimensional information as well as an effectively unlimit ed long-term memory, holding schemas that vary in their degree of auto mation. These structures and functions of human cognitive architecture have been used to design a variety of novel instructional procedures based on the assumption that working memory load should be reduced and schema construction encouraged. This paper reviews the theory and the instructional designs generated by it.