Education Commons^™

Cognitive Architecture And Instructional Design: 20 Years Later, John Sweller, Jeroen J. G Van Merrienboer, Fred Paas

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Cognitive load theory was introduced in the 1980s as an instructional design theory based on several uncontroversial aspects of human cognitive architecture. Our knowledge of many of the characteristics of working memory, long-term memory and the relations between them had been well-established for many decades prior to the introduction of the theory. Curiously, this knowledge had had a limited impact on the field of instructional design with most instructional design recommendations proceeding as though working memory and long-term memory did not exist. In contrast, cognitive load theory emphasised that all novel information first is processed by a capacity and duration …