Elijah Powell
By Francisco Moreno from Unsplash
Introduction
What is Cognitive Load Theory? Cognitive Load theory explains our limited working memory capacity and how this limited capacity is used by three main types of cognitive load: intrinsic, extrinsic, and germane. Managing cognitive load effectively has been shown to increase productivity and generally lower stress in academic settings. In this paper I will discuss the different types of cognitive load and how to manage them effectively. Cognitive Load is directly proportional to academic stress, managing it is imperative for sustainability.
Extrinsic Load
Extrinsic is all the cognitive load you have to manage not including the task at hand, for example when you study: you’re in a messy or noisy environment, you keep getting distracted by notifications, or you're thinking about the milk and cookies you have to buy at the grocery store. Extrinsic load is the mental “bandwidth” that’s used for everything besides studying in this context. You can limit extrinsic cognitive load by removing distractions and cleaning your environment.
Cleaning your environment before each study session can reduce visual pollution, and by limiting the amount of external stimulus, your working memory can allocate more of its resources to perceiving relevant stimuli. Start by generally cleaning your workspace, after your area looks relatively clean, start removing distractions, such as your phone or other devices you aren’t using, food or anything that isn’t useful for the task at hand, use this time to also implement things that may help you focus, a physical timer, a water bottle, or an incognito tab to help prevent scrolling on youtube.
Intrinsic Load
Intrinsic load is the difficulty of the task itself, not to be confused with the perceived difficulty of a task before you do it, which would be germane cognitive load. Intrinsic load would be things like when you're deciphering a complex topic, doing a practice problem, or struggling to read a textbook, to learn what you need too. Intrinsic load is often what keeps you engaged and helps create the perfect environment for flow. If the intrinsic load is too low, you won’t want to do a task and if it’s too high, the perceived risk of failure is too high leading to that same outcome.
One of the most effective ways to offload this type of cognitive load is simply building confidence in your ability. A technique that is often used to build confidence is by interleaving practice problems, meaning doing different sets of practice problems that give you exposure to different related topics and subtopics based on the material you're learning. Simply start by scouring your textbook, the internet, AI tools, etc for practice questions on different topics, answer them, rate your confidence, then go back to the material if either you got the question wrong or you got it right but your confidence was low.
Germane Load
Germane Load is the cognitive load we experience when trying to create permanent knowledge schemes. Germane load is the cognitive load associated with thinking about the information. Germane load can be thought of as how much mental effort you use by thinking about the topics you’re learning, for example in a college level psychology class you probably wouldn’t choose to do something like flashcards extremely early on within the semester because psychology is a subject that contains a high volume conceptually difficult information that requires you to understand multifaceted interactions between different hormones, neurobiological structures, and nervous systems, as opposed to math where conceptual understanding is important, but the topics are heavily detailed with equations. Germane load is how you approach or think about the information presented to you
A good way to start optimizing you can optimize germane load is by developing your Meta-Cognitive ability. Meta-cognition is the ability to think about your own thought processes and optimize them with each study session. Often students study spontaneously and use techniques sporadically, often this leads to us being victims to knowledge decay earlier on in the semester and having to relearn entire topics or “cram” for an exam. Not learning information efficiently leads to poor results, so replicating processes that have given us effective results in the past is important. After each study session reflect on your energy levels and thought process so you can pinpoint what works in order to replicate it in the future.
A slightly more advanced technique to optimize germane load is interleaving. This can be done with practice questions as mentioned before, different examples in a text book, different perspectives, or processes, for example in a algebra 2 course when learning about linear equations, I would also try to expose myself to quadratics and rational equations or if that’s too difficult try to solve linear equations with fractions or learn substitution and elimination methods.
MCR Committee: Health