5 Ways Of Reducing Cognitive Load In eLearning
Being an Instructional Designer is not only about creating content. It's about designing your content to meet your learners' needs. So, your learners should be able to perceive, process, and retain the information inside your content.
Research has it that the human brain has a finite amount of space, and individuals have varying learning capacity. Cognitive load is the total amount of mental effort required by an individual to complete a task in the brain. So, for you to create an ideal eLearning environment, it's best to consider reducing cognitive load.
Here are the 5 effective eLearning design tips for reducing cognitive load in eLearning:
1. Breakdown Your Learning Content Into Smaller Chunks
One vital decision that you must make while creating your eLearning course is the length or duration of the course. Although, many people believe that a specific time should get allocated to a course, most often, the course content is what defines the duration. So, while trying to reduce the length of a course, some L&D professionals tend to cram too much content into a course.
To reduce cognitive load, I advise you to choose a specific duration of time. The general belief is that every 20 minutes of attention people give, mental break sets in. Learners tend to lose interest in a course if its content is lengthy. To avoid that, you need to breakdown your content into different smaller chunks.
For you to have a smooth and engaging learning process, you need to incorporate breaks where necessary in your content.
2. Use Meaningful Infographics In Your Course
One of the most vital eLearning design tips to reduce cognitive load is to use infographics. A picture is worth a thousand words. So, introducing meaningful infographics in your course can help reduce lengthy content. And with relevant infographics, people can get the information you're passing out with ease.
Infographics are best to describe process flow and statistics. For instance, you want to describe a process. Instead of writing lengthy words, you can use colorful infographics to describe the process.
3. Create An Intuitive Design
Another eLearning design tip for reducing cognitive load is to create an intuitive User Interface. For your learners to find your designs to be intuitive, you have to give them what they expect. One factor that takes learners' time is getting to know how your interface work. To avoid that, then you need to design a simple and easy to navigate User Interface.
So, for an L&D professional, you need to maximize the time users spend on your course by designing an easy to use User Interface. Those Instructional Designers who are not great at designing interfaces could use predefined templates. Also, consider using automated eLearning authoring tools to create eLearning courses. The automated system would help you choose the right templates and interfaces based on user history and proven learning reports.
4. Incorporate Practical Methods Into Learning
One of the important parts of creating an eLearning course is to make it easy to retain. By creating a practical session for your learners, they get to practice what they learn and apply them to the real-life task.
It's easy to reduce cognitive load when you apply practical methods into your eLearning design. Through practice, learners can be able to make critical decisions and apply what they learn to complete the task. That'll help them retain the information in your course for a long time.
Use interactivities and gamification to create an environment for practice. Creative use of images, activities, and quizzes are one of the best ways to make eLearning course engaging and interesting.
5. Be Clear And Concise With Your Writing Style And Create Links
Your writing style has a vital role to play on your eLearning course. When you write a clear and concise content, you learners can understand the information you're passing out to them. Avoid using words that are irrelevant to the topic of discussion. Also, creating links can help your learners to further understand the key points you want them to know.
Wrapping up, keep in mind these eLearning design tips to reduce cognitive load while developing your eLearning course to ensure that your design centers on enhancing eLearning experience.
