This is a series of three blog posts on Richard Mayer’s Learning Design Principles.
I’ve spent hours creating what I think is the perfect worksheet. Colourful graphics, detailed explanations, boxes, side-bars, eye-catching borders. But when students get it, they look confused and can't focus on what actually matters.
The problem is that I have put too much detail on the worksheet which doesn’t directly impact learning. This is what Sweller calls ‘extraneous load’. Educational psychologist Richard Mayer's research reveals something counterintuitive: students learn better when we remove, not add. His studies across 60+ experiments show that our brains have limited processing power, and every unnecessary element competes for students' attention.
Mayer had 5 key sub-principles to reduce extraneous processing:
The Coherence Principle: Mayer found students learn better when extraneous words, pictures and sounds are removed.
The Signalling Principle: He found guiding students to the key content (Using arrows, highlighting or bold text) again supported students to use their cognitive load effectively.
Redundancy Principle: People learn better from graphics and narration than from graphics, narration, and on-screen text.
Spatial Contiguity: People learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented close together rather than far apart.
Temporal Contiguity Principle: People learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented simultaneously rather than successively.
All of these principles are embedded in the Chalk ‘Icon Story’ feature. Check it out!