Comments on Bunchberry & Fern: Cognitive Load Stories

My first glance interpretation of the picture is t...

2009-11-28T16:12:29.720Z

My first glance interpretation of the picture is that there has been a mixing of the program schedules on the Discovery Channel. It's not so much about cognitive load, but more about bringing back associations from my long term memory. I immediately remembered Ricky Gervais, in one of his comedy sketches, talking about being an expert on Nazi sharks (from watching so many documentaries when resting between jobs).

On another level the sharks seem to be simply a metaphor for danger (cold blooded instinctive killing machines) or difficult problems, with many of them signifying difficulties from many sources. The nearest shark possibly represents the most imminent danger, and symbolically the first instruction. The sharks further away represent the follow-on sequence of instructions, but they are irrelevent if the first shark kills you (you mess up). The one person in the distance suggests that not everyone successfully gets through the shark (instruction) gauntlet.

PS There is another reason too about the image. Bu...

2009-11-28T08:32:08.225Z

PS There is another reason too about the image. But that's for Soul of a Carrot.

Usable - yes, yes, yes. About the cog thing. Who&#...

2009-11-28T08:31:36.975Z

Usable - yes, yes, yes. About the cog thing. Who's to say what's extraneous. You're ahead of me with the Soul of a Stick.

Sticky - you're guess about the image is totally wrong. But far better an idea than mine. So you win.

The answer to the image thing is, inevitably, a story. I found the image on the web. I loved it. (I could tell that I'm a fan of hyperrealism and I enjoyed the witty comment on language, multimedia and fantasy - but really I just like sky sharks.) And I couldn't stop myself. Everything I did that day I thought to myself - maybe I could use that image here?

We can't stop ourselves. From making things more pretty. From saying "One more thing." From marking our territory.

Great post! Ok the picture......I'd imagine t...

2009-11-28T03:26:46.885Z

Great post! Ok the picture......I'd imagine that when skydiving the most important point to remember is to pull the cord and open the chute.! BUT if you're the instructor teaching a new student you will also tell the student, make sure you do X don't do Y avoid landing on Z. In the end the learner remembers to avoid the flying sharks and to not land near bomb blasts but then (and too late) they remember their teacher saying 'don't forget the most important thing to remember is to open the chute' - The dangers of cognitive load theory for skydiving instructors!

I have a friend who will only let you give him one...

2009-11-27T21:36:12.765Z

I have a friend who will only let you give him one instruction at a time while he's driving (for example "Turn left and get into the right lane" gets vetoed as TMI). I struggle with it because I keep thinking that it's useful to have some sense of what's coming up, but he's good at setting those limits. We aren't necessarily good at limiting ourselves as instructors.

Even when we do try to minimize the load, our perspective is probably off -- what seems a small cog load to us (given that we have the whole picture), isn't necessarily a small cog load for them.

Love this old New Yorker Cartoon for this: http://bit.ly/7gbeSN

Hmh..not sure about the image. Is it that too much of a good thing (and who doesn't love sharks, skydiving and explody things?) all at once turns to shite (or a Michael Bay movie > same diff)?

Hi Olivia The marines are past masters at Cogniti...

2009-11-27T19:03:00.738Z

Hi Olivia

The marines are past masters at Cognitive Load Theory. It's drummed into everything they do - the Rule of Three is something they use in instruction, organisation and structure. Your approach is endorsed by people who know what they're talking about!

I think this is one of the hidden benefits of doing 'traditional' activities. We can watch a film like Harry Potter and already know so much because of the stock characters - it's straight to the action. Same with training - and presenting too, to a certain extent.

I find the same thing giving instructions to adult...

2009-11-27T18:33:40.644Z

I find the same thing giving instructions to adults in a training seminar. I give just one step at a time eg: "stand up" , have them do that, and then give them the next instruction eg: "find someone to partner with".

Even at that level of simplicity, if I don't break it down like that, one or two people out of the group would be floundering!

The picture is illustrating the point that when th...

2009-11-27T16:06:06.534Z

The picture is illustrating the point that when things go bad, you should have a giant octopus handy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa7ck5mcd1o

This short video gives a clue to what the Shark Pi...

2009-11-27T10:28:11.998Z

This short video gives a clue to what the Shark Picture is all about:
http://www.shockmd.com/2009/11/26/teaching-with-twitter/

Hmmm. The image shows up in Safari in mine - must ...

2009-11-27T08:46:47.040Z

Hmmm. The image shows up in Safari in mine - must be a Blogger thing. Blogger's simple to use but it is a complete pain.

Not a bad guess on the picture. It's certainly a plausible thing for me to say. And I like the idea of attention sharks (in some ways, it's better than what I'm trying to say). But I'm thinking more about what teachers (as always here, used in the loosest possible sense) are like.

Don't do x, do y - brilliant. I think this has been shown in advertising too. Don't do drugs, kids! All some kids hear is "Drugs, kids!".

I love this post! Going to be pimping it later :) ...

2009-11-27T07:39:16.179Z

I love this post! Going to be pimping it later :)

I'm going to guess (but may be wrong) that in your learning scenarios, there are sharks everywhere. That actually, so much of what passes for learning activity is really extraneous load, and your chances of being eaten by the attention sharks are pretty high.

BTW, the picture doesn't show up in Safari, though I wonder if that's a Blogger issue (I have similar problems with TypePad).

My teachable stories come from teaching. With kids, I very quickly realised that for some of them, one piece of information was enough. If you said "don't do it like, X, do it like Y", half of them would switch off after X, and do it exactly like that. (I had the luxury of watching someone else get this wrong; it would have been harder to figure out if it was just me doing it.)

With adults (at least, over-18s), you have a bit more capacity to work with, but I've seen colleagues reduce classes to confused silence by asking about three questions in one sentence (or asking very convoluted questions that take too long or too much capacity to process) . I try to work very hard now to ask simple, concrete questions — which doesn't mean the questions are simple, just phrased simply. As ever, still plenty of room for improvement on this.