Let’s take a moment to examine this OneHE course: yes, the one you’re experiencing right now. How did you find your way to this paragraph? It’s likely that you used the navigation links within the virtual learning environment or VLE, and that you knew to use those links because you have either experienced the OneHE orientation to the virtual learning environment, or you have been in other VLEs that have similar structures, and that familiarity led you to understand the way that this course flows: there is
- a welcome, then
- the learning outcomes, then
- content that defines the audience for the course,
- a pre-learning activity,
- a challenge,
- new content that frames an opportunity for learning,
- multimedia resources,
- a space for discussion or interaction,
- an activity to practice the competency that the course learning outcomes define, and
- a summary and call to action.
On the other hand, if this were your first OneHE course – or perhaps your first-ever technology-mediated learning experience – you would definitely not have that familiarity at all. In addition to the ideas and content of the course, you would also need to learn the structure, tools, and expectations of the course, the ‘how to be a learner in this space’ sorts of things that more experienced online learners can take for granted because they know what online-course systems usually look like (some of you reading this may have skipped the orientation all together, no?).
This thought experiment has only one variable: the learning management system (LMS) or virtual learning environment (VLE). But, as you have seen in the pre-activity for this course, we use dozens of technology tools and systems every day. Whenever we encounter systems that are new to us, we must use some of our brain-power to learn how those environments operate, and that is brain-power that is not available for learning the content or ideas in the course. We must use some part of our cognitive load to pay attention to learning the environment itself.
The concept of cognitive load comes from psychology. The subject matter itself presents cognitive load. But so does the learning environment itself and the ways in which materials and interactions are designed. When we think of our online and technology-mediated learners, studying and interacting on their mobile devices and wherever and whenever they can fit studying into their busy lives, we want to give them as much mental processing power as possible to focus on the content and ideas in our offerings.
So, the desired state of things in technology-mediated learning is to reduce the learning curve for new-tool barriers while also making space for using “just the right tool†for a given learning interaction.