Picture this: I’m fresh on the scene as a new learning designer, proud of my first course about the pH of water systems in a coal-fired power plant. To ‘spice things up,’ I throw in a fun fact about the pH of beer. The result? A confused audience and a diluted message. It’s a pitfall many novice designers fall into—the lure of making things ‘interesting’ at the cost of clarity and focus. Welcome to an exploration of a guideline that would have saved me from this rookie mistake. This brings us to an essential rule of thumb for anyone invested in crafting compelling learning modules—the Coherence Principle.
The Underpinnings of the Coherence Principle
The Coherence Principle asserts that learners can be distracted by extraneous material. In simpler terms, don’t serve a five-course meal when the learner ordered only an appetizer. Your training program may be a marvel of multimedia, but if it’s flooded with irrelevant content—be it text or visuals—it’s doing more harm than good.
A Tale of Cognitive Overload
Your learners’ brains are not infinite vessels; they have a limit on how much they can process at a given time, a concept explored by cognitive load theory. Irrelevant pictures, gratuitous use of color, and redundant bullet points are like cognitive speed bumps, slowing down the assimilation of essential information. This results in cognitive overload, where a learner’s working memory is so bogged down with unnecessary elements that they fail to grasp the core ideas.
Scientific Backing: The Proof is in the Pudding
Don’t take my word for it. In a 2006 study by Richard E. Mayer and Roxana Moreno, learners who were exposed to educational material aligned with the Coherence Principle performed significantly better in retention tests than those who received ‘embellished’ learning materials[1]. Another study led by Paul Ayres in 2013 established that learners who faced excessive cognitive load exhibited a decline in performance[2].
The Right Way to Use Visuals
Let’s be clear: this principle doesn’t discourage the use of images or multimedia. In fact, pictures can aid in learning, a phenomenon encapsulated in the adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” The trick is to use images that serve as cognitive aids and are directly relevant to the material at hand. For instance, if you’re explaining the water cycle, an accompanying diagram can cement the concept. A random picture of a beach, however lovely, serves no purpose.
The Convergence of Learning and Marketing
If we delve into the world of marketing, a field I’ve often argued needs to merge its wisdom with educational strategies, you’d see a similar adherence to coherence. The most effective ad campaigns don’t bombard you with information. They give you what’s relevant and serve it in a way that your primal brain, a nod to Daniel Kahneman’s Dual Processing model, can digest and act upon.
Parting Words
The Coherence Principle isn’t just a theory; it’s a call to arms to respect the cognitive limits of your learners. In an age of information overload, less is often more. We, as instructional designers, owe it to our learners to serve them a perfectly curated learning experience, devoid of distractions.
As you embark on this journey of streamlining and coherence, remember, you’re not just an instructional designer; you’re an architect of minds. Build wisely.
Sources:
- Richard E. Mayer and Roxana Moreno, “Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning,” Educational Psychologist 38, no.1 (2003): 43-52.
- Paul Ayres, “Can the use of cognitive load theory and deliberate practice explain the performance patterns of novices learning to suture?” Medical Education 47, no. 9 (2013): 922–930.
Mike Taylor 