Do you ever give your students an exciting independent task, and then wonder why they are sitting in silence and not getting on with it?
Intrinsic load, which is part of cognitive load theory (CLT), could explain why this is happening and suggest how we can improve our learning materials.
What is cognitive load theory in simple terms?
Cognitive load theory states that we have a finite amount of space in our working memory to learn new things.
While the number of new things we can learn is limited, we can draw on an unlimited store of information in long-term memory.
For example, when you read this paragraph, you don’t have to stop and think about each letter of the alphabet. Your knowledge of letters and words is stored in long-term memory, so your working memory can focus on the meaning of the sentences.
If you want to know more about working memory and long-term memory, read my blog article titled “ Why Teachers Should Consider Students’ Working Memory Limits When Designing Learning Tasks”
Cognitive load theory: Element interactivity
We call the things we process in working memory “elements”. The more elements that have to be processed together at the same time (letters, words, ideas, steps, or pieces of information), the higher the cognitive load. This is known as element interactivity.
Working memory is limited: it can only hold a small number of elements (around 7±2) and process about 4 of them at once.
But what counts as an “element” depends on how developed your schema is. A schema is a network of connected knowledge in long-term memory that helps you make sense of new information, and it grows as you adapt and learn.
With more developed schemas, people can chunk multiple pieces of information into a single element, and then draw on it from long-term memory.
For example, consider in-text citations:
- A beginner student might read (Smith, 2020, p. 14) as lots of separate elements — name, year, page, brackets, punctuation.
- An experienced student sees it as one element: “a reference to the source.”
Intrinsic Cognitive Load
Some tasks have lower intrinsic load because they have low element interactivity, like learning the different names of the symbols in the periodic table. The learning of one chemical symbol does not rely on the learning of any other chemical symbols.
Other tasks have higher intrinsic load because they have high element interactivity, like reading complex academic texts. This requires readers to process different elements, such as challenging vocabulary, complex grammatical structures, dense ideas, author’s stance, and logical connections between ideas, all at the same time.
However, the intrinsic load of these tasks will vary between individuals, depending on how developed their schemas are (since this determines what counts as a single element for them).
Basically, the more new elements that interact in your working memory, the harder the task becomes.
Scaffolding vs Schema
In terms of designing learning materials, when students lack relevant schemas, the teacher can help free up working memory capacity by providing scaffolding (temporary support). Scaffolding helps by breaking a complex task into smaller steps.
For example, if students are new to reading journal articles, teachers can pre-teach key vocabulary. This way, students don’t have to decode every new word while also making sense of the ideas in the text, leaving more working memory free to understand the article.
However, the more developed schema a student has, the less scaffolding they need. For example, if a teacher asks a PhD student to read a journal article in the student’s area of expertise, there’s no need to pre-teach vocabulary because the student already has the schema for that vocabulary. In fact, unnecessary scaffolding can hinder learning when students already have well-developed schemas. This is known as the expertise reversal effect.
Final Takeaways
Students’ brains are not bottomless cups. Pour in too much knowledge at once, and it simply overflows.
Scaffolding works like a percolator, slowing the flow of information so that it drips steadily through working memory. It can then be absorbed into long-term memory.
When designing learning materials, we should ask ourselves:
- What do my students already know about the topic (schema)?
- How much of the vocabulary are they likely to understand?
- What scaffolding will my students need to complete this task successfully?
- Can I break the task into smaller stages to reduce overload?
- Which parts of the task are essential for the learning goal, and which can be simplified or removed?
If we fail to do this, students may turn to AI tools and translators as a way to cope with overload rather than as genuine learning tools.
We also increase the risk of cognitive overload, and the negative effects associated with that – lack of motivation and engagement.
