Cognitive load theory, educational research, and instructional design: some food for thought

Cognitive load is a theoretical notion with an increasingly central role in the educational research literature. The basic idea of cognitive load theory is that cognitive capacity in working memory is limited, so that if a learning task requires too much capacity, learning will be hampered. The recommended remedy is to design instructional systems that optimize the use of working memory capacity and avoid cognitive overload. Cognitive load theory has advanced educational research considerably and has been used to explain a large set of experimental findings. This article sets out to explore the open questions and the boundaries of cognitive load theory by identifying a number of problematic conceptual, methodological and application-related issues. It concludes by presenting a research agenda for future studies of cognitive load

Software scaffolds to promote regulation during scientific inquiry learning

This research addresses issues in the design of online scaffolds for regulation within inquiry learning environments. The learning environment in this study included a physics simulation, data analysis tools, and a model editor for students to create runnable models. A regulative support tool called the Process Coordinator (PC) was designed to assist students in planning, monitoring, and evaluating their investigative efforts within this environment. In an empirical evaluation, 20 dyads received a “full” version of the PC with regulative assistance; dyads in the control group (n = 15) worked with an “empty” PC which contained minimal structures for regulative support. Results showed that both the frequency and duration of regulative tool use differed in favor of the PC+ dyads, who also wrote better lab reports. PC− dyads viewed the content helpfiles more often and produced better domain models. Implications of these differential effects are discussed and suggestions for future research are advanced

Incarnations: exploring the human condition through Patrick White's Voss and Nikos Kazantzakis' Captain Michales.

Nikos Kazantzakis' Captain Michales is a freedom fighter in nineteenth century Crete. Patrick White's Voss is a German explorer in nineteenth century Australia. Two men struggling for achievement, their disparate social contexts united in the same fundamental search for meaning. This thesis makes comparison of these different struggles through thematic analysis of the texts, examining within the narratives the role of food, perceptions of body and soul, landscapes, gender relations, home-coming and religious experience. Themes from the novels are extracted and intertwined, within a range of theoretical frameworks: history, anthropology, science, literary and social theories, religion and politics; allowing close investigation of each novel's social, political and historical particularities, as well as their underlying discussion of perennial human issues. These novels are each essentially explorations of the human experience. Read together, they highlight the commonest of human elements, most poignantly the need for communion; facilitating analysis of the individual and all our communities. Comparing the two novels also continues the process of each: examining the self both within and outside of the narratives, producing a new textual self, arising from both primary sources and the contextual breadth of such rewriting