[Edu-sig] On the front page

[David Scherer]

> Inspiration of students to undertake the maximum cognitive load
> within their capabilities. I believe that Python could have an
> extremely important role in a curriculum designed to do just that.
> Which is why I'm here.
>
> The fact that the phrase 'minimum cognitive load' anywhere within
> a hundred miles of an educational project sends shivers down my
> spine, is not something I can find a way of backing away from,

"Cognitive load" is jargon, and probably doesn't mean what you think.  A
Google search turned up the following (I was surprised to notice that I know
some of the people cited; e.g. Kotovsky taught my Intro to Psych course last
spring :)

| Cognitive load theory (Sweller, 1988; 1994) derives instructional
| design principles from aspects of our cognitive architecture. The
| theory assumes a very limited working memory (Miller, 1956), an
| effectively unlimited long-term memory (Simon and Gilmartin, 1973)
| holding large numbers of schemas (Chi, Glaser & Rees, 1982) that can
| vary in their degree of automaticity (Kotovsky, Hayes & Simon, 1985).

It is, I think, generally accepted by psychologists that people have a very
limited short-term memory capacity, on the order of seven "chunks".  The
size of a chunk depends largely on long-term familiarity information of
similar structure ("schema").  Our limited working memories place limits on
our thinking and learning abilities, just as available memory places limits
on what a computer program can do.

Many activities, like programming, require us to keep many things in mind at
one time.  These have a high "intrinsic cognitive load."  A particular
teaching method or problem-solving strategy may require more "working
memory" than the minimum, just as an inefficient algorithm may use more
computer memory than necessary.  This wasted memory is called "extraneous
cognitive load."  When the total (intrinsic + extraneous) cognitive load
exceeds a student's short-term memory capacity, learning performance drops,
just as your computer's performance drops when it runs out of RAM.

Like everything related to education, the actual application of these ideas
is subject to much debate.  The bare fact that short-term memory capacity
can be a limit on learning performance doesn't provide much guidance.  Some
researchers have even suggested that a major source of cognitive load in the
classroom is social stress: "the task of developing strategy to prevent loss
of face is a significant cognitive load in many learning situations."

When someone writes "minimum cognitive load" they probably aren't describing
a person sitting vegetable-like in front of a computer screen while the
computer does everything for them.  Instead, they mean that the
*unnecessary* cognitive load has been minimized, leaving as much capacity as
possible for the problem at hand.  The line between necessary and
unnecessary is ultimately a question of what we want to teach.  Even if we
want to teach "everything," it is a harsh reality that people don't have the
capacity to learn everything simultaneously.

> Yet to anyone who sees it differently, or who finds my approach in
> the discussion of this issue unnecessarily specific, agressive
> or heavy-handed, I do apologize.

No need to apologize.  As you say, there's been zero traffic on this list
recently, so you can hardly make things worse.

Dave