Cognitive Overload: What is it, and how does it affect you?

With the fall upon us, many faculty are welcoming new cohorts and rolling up their sleeves to begin a new semester and course. So, I thought it would be good to talk about workload. One of the things I consistently hear from faculty is their concern about workload. In my experience and my dissertation research, it was one of the most surprising and unexpected aspects of being a new faculty member. Faculty commonly expressed that they feel the workload is too much and overwhelming. A question I commonly get is, "Does it get easier." My answer usually is, "Well, yes and no." Certainly, it takes longer the first time you develop and/or run a course. However, each subsequent running of that course tends to take less work and time because you have done it before. However, academia carries many responsibilities other than teaching students that many faculty only come to learn once they become faculty members. There is all the behind-the-scenes work of learning about accreditations, writing syllabi, developing exams, creating lectures, grading exams, meeting with students, attending program and institutional meetings, and meeting scholarship and service requirements as defined by your institution, to name a few. And there never seems to be enough hours in the day or the week to get to it all, and you find yourself working a lot at night and on the weekends. However, it is important to know that teaching has never been a 9 to 5 job. Working at home on things is commonplace. In fact, in higher education, we have more time during the day to work on items than, say, a high school or elementary school teacher who is engaged with their students most of the entire school day.

It goes without saying that part of navigating this unexpected shift in workload, which is different from clinical practice, is having good time management skills and holding effective boundaries. But another factor is at play here: cognitive load and overload. Cognitive load refers to the fact that our brains have a limit to the amount of information we can process at any given time (Schiano, 2021; van Merriënboer & Sweller, 2005). Cognitive overload is when we exceed our brain's capacity to process information (Marousis, 2023; Schiano, 2021). When this occurs, it is common to feel overwhelmed, burned out, and anxious. It can lead to being less productive, impairing our ability to focus and concentrate, and making decisions more difficult (Marousis, 2023). 

In order to better understand cognitive load and overload, we need to talk a bit about Cognitive Load Theory (CLT). This learning theory, introduced by John Sweller in the 1980s, focuses on how the working memory processes information and the associated cognitive demands and limitations of those processes. By understanding these processes, Sweller believed it could help teachers determine and optimize instruction to support effective learning (Cognitive Load Theory: A Teacher's Guide, n.d.; Hawthorne et al., 2019). CLT encompasses the concepts of cognitive load and overload. Two types of cognitive load affect us as teachers: intrinsic and extraneous. Intrinsic cognitive load has to do with how difficult the topic or material that you are teaching is, the more complex the more cognitive load. Think about when you taught a lecture on a topic you didn't feel particularly strong in or when you taught something for the first time. It requires more working memory from you as you track, think, and present the material and field questions from the students. The more you teach this content or material, the cognitive load lessens. Extraneous cognitive load refers to all the other things you are doing and tracking while teaching and how you are managing your attention and that of your students, such as making eye contact with the students, remembering what you wanted to say about the topic, remembering student's names, keeping track of time, and monitoring the energy level and reactions of students to name a few.

The good news is there are things we can do to guard against cognitive overload, both intrinsic and extraneous. Although planning for every possible event is impossible, thinking and planning ahead can help decrease intrinsic overload. For example, if you have a new lecture to give or are now directing a new course, think about all you have already done instead of starting from scratch and what you can repurpose and reuse. This isn't just about materials; it is about formats, activities, types of assignments, and assessments that can be tweaked to fit the new situation (Schiano, 2021).

Be sure to establish the essential educational triad. This tight alignment is between clearly defined course learning outcomes, instructional objectives, and assessment. The key item here is effectively defining your course learning outcomes to what students must learn by the end of your course (Schiano, 2021). We are all guilty of struggling with this because we believe it's all important. We try to cram too much in the course or too much in a lecture. This increases cognitive load. We must pare it down to those most important concepts and consider what students have already learned. So many times, I observe faculty re-teaching concepts that have already been taught in another course. By knowing what students have already learned, you can make better decisions about what and how much to cover in your course, thus reducing the cognitive load of thinking you have to cover it all.

Arrange your content into small chunks or mini modules – such as 15-20 minutes of lecture on a topic or subtopic. This decreases your cognitive load by keeping the information related to the material you are focused on smaller (Marousis, 2023; Schiano, 2021). For example, determining that for your one-hour class, you will focus on essential historical and physical examination findings and suggested diagnostics in the first half of class for a particular disease, then give the students (and you) a short brain break and then spend the second half of the class on interpreting diagnostic findings to make the diagnosis and recommended treatments. Creating your class time into smaller content-focused areas requires less intrinsic cognitive load for you.

Remember, we said that extraneous cognitive load encompasses all those other things we are doing while we are trying to teach, such as watching and tracking student attention and engagement, fielding questions, and keeping track of time. Although a certain amount of this attention toward tracking students and time is unavoidable, we can do some things regarding how the class time and activities are structured that can help decrease some of this load. The previous suggestion about breaking content into smaller chunks can help reduce intrinsic and extraneous, especially in a lecture-type setting. However, we also have lab classes that involve teaching students skills. So,

let's say you are teaching injections to a group of 20 students, and you are the only instructor. You can have each student practicing on their own while you run around trying to visit 20 students individually, not including those who raise their hands and need help. This is a high extraneous cognitive load as you try to keep your finger on the pulse of 20 students at once. But, by breaking students into two groups of ten or four groups of five, now you have to move between 2 or 4 groups and not 20 students, which is mentally more manageable than trying to run around 20 individual students. Of course, the other option is to have more than just you in the lab. Either way, it reduces extraneous cognitive load.

Knowing about cognitive load and overload can help us better manage our roles and responsibilities and guard against overwhelm, frustration, exhaustion, and burnout. However, this concept of cognitive load and overload doesn't only affect us as teachers. It also affects our students. In an upcoming newsletter, I will address cognitive load and overload as it relates to our students.

 References

 Cognitive Load Theory: A Teacher's Guide (n.d.). Future Education Magazine. https://futureeducationmagazine.com/cognitive-load-theory-a-teachers-guide/

Hawthorne, B. S., Vella-Brodrick, D. A., & Hattie, J. (2019, October 22). Well-being as a cognitive load reducing agent: A review of the literature. Frontiers in Education, 4(121), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2019.00121

Marousis, A. (2023, April 7). What is cognitive overload? Causes, effects, and solutions. Talentcards.https://www.talentcards.com/blog/what-is-cognitive-overload/

Schiano, B. (2121, May 6). Give your brain a break – Course design tips to avoid feeling overwhelmed: 5 Questions to ask yourself when planning for a new semester. Harvard Business Publishing Education. https://hbsp.harvard.edu/inspiring-minds/course-design-tips-to-avoid-feeling-overwhelmed?cid

van Merriënboer, J. J. G., & Sweller, J. (2005). Cognitive Load Theory and complex learning: Recent developments and future directions. Educational Psychology Review, 17(2), 147–177. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-005-3951-0