Description
Have you ever wondered how the content you’re teaching in class makes its way into your students’ brains? Well, that journey begins from their eyes and ears, which send information to their Sensory Memory. From there, the salient bit of sensory input–ideally that new content being taught–makes its way to a student’s Working Memory. After a couple of minutes, that new information finishes its travels and ends up in a student’s Long-Term Memory, where everything else they’ve ever learned is stored. Learning accomplished!
While the learning process seems straightforward enough, there are a few roadblocks inside our Working Memory that can derail everything. First, it has limited capacity, so it can only hold so many things at a time. Additionally, some things “weigh” more on the mind, which further impacts how much we can hold in our Working Memory. Finally, things can remain in our Working Memory for about 30 seconds before they disappear forever into the void of unlearned things. It turns out that making that two-minute trek to Long-Term Memory can be quite challenging!
This is where Cognitive Load Theory comes in, which gives us a framework we can apply to our teaching, so we can try and smooth over those roadblocks to learning. Participants in this session will learn about Cognitive Load Theory and discuss ways they can apply its concepts to their classrooms.
