WHAT’S NEW IN THIS CHAPTER?
I
N SOME OF THE PREVIOUS CHAPTERS you learned how to
reduce extraneous processing (that is, processing caused by poor instructional
design), by eliminating extraneous words and pictures (Chapter 8), by
placing corresponding words and illustrations near each other on the screen
(Chapter 5), or by refraining from adding redundant on-screen text to a
narrated animation (Chapter 7). In Chapter 2, we introduced the concept of
essential cognitive processing that results from the complexity of the material.
In this chapter we focus on situations in which learners must engage in so
much essential processing that their cognitive systems are overwhelmed. In
particular, in this chapter we focus on techniques for managing essential processing,
including segmenting (breaking a lesson into manageable segments)
and pretraining (providing pretraining in the names and characteristics of
key concepts). This chapter represents an update on the growing research
base on techniques for managing the learning of complex material.