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Cognitive Load Theory And The Format Of Instruction, Paul Chandler, John Sweller

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

Cognitive load theory suggests that effective instructional material facilitates learning by directing cognitive resources toward activities that are relevant to learning rather than toward preliminaries to learning. One example of ineffective instruction occurs if learners unnecessarily are required to mentally integrate disparate sources of mutually referring information such as separate text and diagrams. Such split-source infonnation may generate a heavy cognitive load, because material must be mentally integrated before learning can commence. This article reports findings from six experiments testing the consequences of split-source and integrated information using electrical engineering and biology instructional materials. Experiment 1 was designed to compare …