Cognitive Overload Online Tutorial

View the Cognitive Overload Online Tutorial
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Problem Statement
Cognitive overload directly impacts the learning process, hinders the ability to learn new information and can be disruptive to instructors and other learners in a classroom setting. Instructional designers and trainers need to understand the concept of cognitive overload, prepare to avoid cognitive overload in the design of the course, and recognize when learners experience it and adjust the course accordingly.

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Situation Analysis
This website is an appropriate tutorial for adult learners, specifically trainers and instructional designers, and students of Instructional and Learning Technologies graduate degree program at UCD. My overall goals with the tutorial were to increase the awareness of cognitive overload and provide instructional strategies for trainers and designers to manage cognitive load in their learners.

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Rationale
The online setting is appropriate for the audience, as trainers and instructional designers can rarely take time out to attend a seminar or workshop. This tutorial is accessible via the Internet, reaching a wide audience. The accessibility coupled with the myriad of instructional strategies within the tutorial provides a good foundation of the Cognitive Overload Theory.

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Results Report
Several fellow classmates and instructional design colleagues and trainers have looked at this tutorial. Their feedback has been favorable, however the overall suggestion would be to add even more interactivity. This course has been successfully implemented as a link to a website that I created for one of my client companies, the Training Resource Center.

The Training Resource Center is an Intranet site for nationwide trainers to share their ideas, download training templates and keep up to date on their facilitation skills. A formative evaluation has been done on the usefulness of the Cognitive Overload Online Tutorial and the results were as expected. The trainers had all experienced a leaner in their class with some level of cognitive overload, but did not know the term for it. The majority of the trainers had also tried the instructional strategies to reduce cognitive load outlined in the tutorial with success in their subsequent classes.

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Evidence of Value

The trainers that access the Training Resource Center have benefited from this tutorial with a greater understanding of cognitive overload and identifying instructional strategies to use as tools to reduce cognitive load.

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Reflections

Upon reflection, and formative evaluation, I would include more interactivity for the learner. This tutorial seems very content heavy and I would like to break it up more to keep the learners engaged. I would also like to add a simulation activity where the learners would experience cognitive overload for themselves. I feel that experiencing cognitive overload would enhance the appreciation for using instructional strategies to manage it. I would also create more case studies and/or opportunities for the learner to work with online instructional strategies. There is a lot of research on information overload in regard to online learning, but not cognitive overload. The correlation between the two is very interesting and opens up the topic to a wider audience, instructional designers of online learning. Fortunately this project is not complete, and I will have the opportunity to enhance this learning experience by implementing some of the solutions described above.

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Responsibilities Met

Responsibility #2- Designs instruction or human performance strategy to meet the needs of learners. This tutorial was designed to meet the needs of a dispersed audience, focusing on an audience of trainers and instructional designers.

Responsibility #3-Uses a variety of media to deliver instruction to students and to engage student in learning. The online setting for this tutorial is appropriate for the diverse audience targeted, and the variety of instructional strategies and activities used within the tutorial strive to engage the learner.

Responsibility #4-Understands how to capitalize on the capacities and abilities of each learner. This tutorial is designed for instructional designers and trainers; however, the non-linear instructional design allows learners with prior knowledge of Cognitive Overload to navigate freely though the tutorial.

Responsibility #6-Uses incisive and relevant assessment and evaluation techniques. At the end of each section in the tutorial, there is an assessment activity to evaluate the learners understanding of the material covered.

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