human brain with electric bolts
Your brain on cognitive overload

I ran across an interesting article on Twitter the other day from EdSurge titled Why Your Students Forget Everything on Your Powerpoint SlidesThe articles focusses on something we talk about all the time in ATS – “cognitive overload” – The idea being that students can only really take in and retain so much information at a time. We take this into consideration when we talk about presenting Powerpoints in a classroom or in taking our cirriculum online with a Moodle page. What this article got me thinking about, though, is that it’s not just how much information is being presented that can cause cognitive overload, but how it’s being presented as well. For instance, putting some notes on a Powerpoint and then reading them aloud presents the same information twice – but rather than reinforcing a concept, presenting the same exact information twice might just be filling some of the student’s limited load with redundant information.

The author suggests using mixed media to highlight the information you are presenting and engage different aspects of learning in lessons. For instance, to explain a complicated concept, you might include a graph or chart and verbally walk through the meaning rather than reading a list of bullet points or key concepts. This might give your learner a more holistic understanding of the lesson material and allow them to grasp the key concepts in relation to the topic itself.

Some key takeaways:

  • It’s best to use a mix of explanation in your own words with supporting multimedia. Avoid text heavy slides if you can.
  • If you do still need text use single words or phrases with supporting multimedia and then explain them verbally
  • Use the personality principle (“I, you, we”) to connect students to your lesson

The video below from Youtube provides an interesting, and more in depth look at some tips you can use to optimize student comprehension – including an explanation of the redundancy principal, personality principal, multimedia principle, and more.

brain image courtesy of aboutmodafinil.com CC 2.0 generic license

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