DyKnow

So one of the themes I've seen in my reader the past few months has been the mentioning of cognitive load theory.  It might be mentioned in someone's paper or passively mentioned en route to some other point, but it was enough for me to sit up and wonder "what's that?"

Cognitive load theory(CLT) is the branch of psychology that gave us the 7-digit phone number.  It explores the capacity of the mind to retain information, something that is quite important to educators as well.  The intro to the intro version of CLT states that the mind can only take so much load and there are three types of cognitive load: intrinsic, extraneous, and germane.  

Intrinsic cognitive load describes the inherent difficulty in the subject matter.  There is a greater load when reading Ulysses than there is reading Green Eggs and Ham.  Simple addition is easier than calculus.  It is noted that while there are strategies to manage this, intrinsic cognitive load is largely out of your control.  

Extraneous cognitive load describes the unnecessary cognitive load present during instruction.  An extreme example of this might be trying to learn a subject in foreign language.  While the translation exercise may be very good for practicing the foreign language, it stands as a barrier to learning the subject being taught.

The final type, germane, is described as the load present when constructing schema (the unit of learning in CLT).  These are (among many things) the connections and metaphors you might construct to explain and relate new information to past information.  The mind is working when learning which does increase load; it's only that this load is the kind we want to increase.

So in comes the Fire Story, Dave Berque's story about his earliest days of teaching and coming to the epiphany that technology could aid him in engaging his students.  As the story goes, Dr. Berque was forced to hit the ground running as an educator, teaching a theoretical computer science course.  He explained the material, copying his notes on the board, while students copied the board into their notes.  All the while, the class was disappointingly silent.  Then one day, Dr. Berque noticed seven hands raised in his class of 150 people and excitedly called on one of the students.  He was soon disappointed to learn that these seven students were only trying to inform him that the ceiling had caught fire after a light had exploded.

The extraneous cognitive load from furiously copying notes had become so overwhelming to the students that only 7/150 had noticed the ceiling was on fire.  It seems fair to say that if students' minds were too overloaded for their survival instincts to detect danger, there was likely little room for new schema acquisition.  

From this experience, Dr. Berque was inspired to create DEBBIE which later became DyKnow.  Now his notes on the board are automatically transfered to students and he is free to focus on active learning activities designed to increase germane load and creating a more engaged (and less overworked) classroom.  

It's important to note, in my opinion, that not everything Dr. Berque writes is automatically transferred to students.  I think one of the problems with many PowerPoint presentations is that they after oversimplifying concepts down to a few bullet points they spoon feed you those points one at a time, reducing your need to pay attention.  Additionally, I believe there is quite a bit of mnemonic potential in physically writing (in moderation).  Dr. Berque takes advantage of this potential by using what is called "private ink."  When he writes on the interactive whiteboard at the front of the class with private ink, students see what he's writing, but are forced to copy it into their notes.  This helps provide emphasis on key concepts, which in turn will hopefully lead to better schema construction.