I continually thought about my ELL students and my traumatized students while reading Cognitive Architecture and Instructional Design by Sweller, van Merrienboer, and Paas. Since this is not my first experience with examining cognition or neuroscience, I was able to draw on some long-term memory while reading this. In thinking about ELL students I wonder about how they process information. As is typical of the ELL students in my area, many of them come with varying degrees of education and most of them arrive with a deficit. Therefore, they are having to navigate learning a new language while learning what might be highly advanced material considering their educational experience. Occasionally, other instructors at my site do not understand the barriers that these students face, and they will provide the ELLs with many aides and tools. They provide a “combination of mutually referring diagrams and text” and the ELL students have difficulty “mentally integrat[ing]” them because of the “heavy extraneous cognitive load” (Sweller, van Merrienboer & Paas, 1998, p.264). There is too much for them to process and then they struggle to access the curriculum. This is also true for students with trauma. Their trauma prevents them from processing anything extraneous and they often lack the long-term memory that the teacher is trying to utilize. Although Sweller et. al. suggest a different approach to instructional design that assists with increasing the germane cognitive load, I have concerns with this approach when it comes to ELL. They suggest that providing students with examples and engaging students by “asking questions about the examples or making examples incomplete so that students have to complete them may then help students learn” (Sweller, van Merrienboer & Paas, 1998, p.264). This is acceptable for the neurotypical, the unencumbered, and native language speakers. Asking an ELL to complete an example is problematic. Often those examples are hegemonic and students learning not just a new language but a new culture may not be able to access the long-term memory that a native speaker can because they have a different cultural context for the examples.
On the other hand, this is a great instructional tool that can help students. It is not just about reducing the cognitive load, but also about a constructivist approach to education. Students are then given space to create meaning in what they are learning and when they do this, the learning becomes personalized. That personalization is different from the personalization principle we discussed in later classes, but still an important part of education. When students can make meaning of their learning it both accesses long-term memory and creates investment in education.
The type 1 description in Mayer and Moreno’s study Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning describes how text and pictures should interact. When students are asked to read text at a distance from the images depicting a process or example it creates a “split attention effect” (Mayer & Moreno, 2003, p.45). I am guilty of this instructional design faux pas. In a few video tutorials that I designed during distance learning, I’ve asked students to read text while viewing an example on the screen. I’ve likewise asked them to read a text and write at the same time or view a short or informational film and write at the same time. As I mentioned in my previous response, this is an impossible task for ELL students. However, I have been known to ask my native speakers to process information in this way. Considering the split attention effect, I’m revising components of my cognate that have this kind of instructional design.
Conversely, the information presented in type 2 is something that I do consider in my instruction. I have long understood the negative ramification of not allowing processing time, most especially for language learners or students with trauma. Instructors cannot ask learners to commit information to long-term memory when “the pace of the presentation is fast” and “by the time the learner selects relevant words and pictures from one segment… the next segment begins” (Mayer & Moreno, 2003, p.47). This method is both ripe with cognitive overload, or simply confusion, and possibly giving up interest. Instructors utilizing this method might find disinterested students or a classroom management issue. As the “suggested solution” is to simply “allow some time between…segments of the presentation”, this seems like a “no brainer”, supporting a learner-centric environment (Mayer & Moreno, 2003, p.47). Giving students space and time to learn will yield better results.
The type of confusion that occurs with type 4 is also a common instructional design flaw when considering ELLs. Instructors may provide helpful pictures and words, but the layout is confusing. Language learners may not understand something as simple as a fill-in-the-blank type of quiz question. Considering that this is a challenge for them, adding examples and instructions far too separated from each other causes cognitive overload. Understanding this is very helpful for me. Often I advise other educators to provide word banks and pictures, to allow ELL students to craft their answers to the assignment from the provided bank. However, if this helpful bank is far too separated from the task itself, those learners in addition to native speakers will have a challenging time. Even with multimedia, I found myself creating texts and images that were too far from each other, and students didn’t know where to look, much less how to process both items. The "contiguous presentation of corresponding words and graphics is intended to minimize extraneous process while guiding the learner's attention toward the relevant portion" and not the other way around (Mayer & Johnson, 2008, p.384). When students “must engage in a great deal of scanning to figure out which part of the animation corresponds with the words” it creates “incidental processing” and this hinders learning (Mayer & Moreno, 2003, p.47). As I reevaluate my handouts or multimedia presentations for this kind of error, I will look to streamline and align my instructions and examples. This particular scenario analysis also helped me reduce the cognitive load on my website. The previous edition contained far too much extraneous information.
Mayer, R. E., & Johnson, C. I. (2008, May). Revising the redundancy principle in multimedia learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100(2), 380–386. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.100.2.380
Mayer, R.E., & Moreno, R. (2003). Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning. Educational Psychologist, 38, 43 - 52.
Sweller, J., van Merrienboer, J. J. G., & Paas, F. G. W. C. (1998). Cognitive Architecture and Instructional Design. Educational psychology review, 10(3), 251- 296. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022193728205