Center for Learning and Teaching

Main navigation

Uncategorized

“Don’t Make Me Think!”: Minimizing Your Students’ Extraneous Cognitive Load

Web usability experts sometimes use the mantra “don’t make me think”* to describe the ideal for clear, clutter-free web design and navigation. 

While this may sound simplistic or lazy, it’s actually just a catchy summation of one of the fundamental principles of “cognitive load theory”. 

In broad terms, cognitive load theory breaks the types of thinking needed for a college course into two types:

  • Intrinsic cognitive load. This is the thinking required to master the actual course content.
  • Extraneous cognitive load. This is the thinking required to manage the learning process (parsing texts and examples, finding important content and references, figuring out where assignments are, and so on). 

While as instructors we cannot change the “intrinsic” cognitive load required to learn our subject, we have a great deal of control over the “extraneous” cognitive load that is imposed by our course design.

Thus, “don’t make me think” might be more appropriately expressed as “don’t make me think about the nonessential stuff so that I can think better about the stuff that really matters in this course”.

That’s why the Center for Learning and Teaching has developed the Canvas Template. The Template is designed to ensure that all Canvas courses use the same basic navigation and organization system. 

Importing and using the Canvas Template is one of the best ways to reduce your students’ extraneous cognitive load. Here’s how.

Once you’ve loaded your content in the Canvas Template, a good way to test the usability of your course is to look at your course in “student view”. This is easy to do – simply go to the homepage of the course and click the button marked “Student View” on the top right. (Here are the full instructions for getting into student view.)

If you want to get fancy, recruit someone in your household who isn’t familiar with Canvas to take your course for a test-drive in student view and adjust it based on their feedback.

* Don’t Make Me Think is the title of one of the classics of website usability design, first published in 2000 by Steve Krug. Here’s a PDF of an updated version that was published in 2014.

How to Make Screen Reading a Little Easier for Your Students

As you’ve probably noticed, reading on a screen is hard! It strains the eyes – and research suggests that it reduces comprehension and concentration.

In a flex-hybrid course, some screen reading is inevitable, but there are steps you can take to make it less taxing for your students. Here’s how:

  • Don’t ask students to multitask when they’re looking at something on-screen. In particular, don’t expect that they’ll be able to take notes while doing so. In addition to using “present screen” to share notes or slides, make sure you send students a copy that they can review later, too. 
  • Post notes in a format that can be printed on paper if students prefer. 
  • Make sure course notes and handouts are compatible with screen readers. (PDF is a great format for this, as long as your PDFs are accessible. (There’s some general information on making class materials accessible here; if you have a specific PDF you want to check for accessibility, you can do that here.)
  • Design your notes, slides, and handouts to be read on screens. Read on for more…

Designing Screen-Friendly Web Pages and Documents

Fonts

Give everyone’s eyes a break by using a font that is designed for screens. Georgia and Verdana are two commonly-available ones that you can access from both Windows and Mac computers. They are also “web-safe fonts” – i.e. they will be rendered the same on more than 99% of browsers. 

Note, though, that not all “web-safe fonts” are specifically designed for screen reading. For example, Times New Roman is a web-safe font, but it doesn’t always render cleanly on a screen. The serifs sometimes get a bit pixellated and that can make the text fuzzy, which means some people may have to strain to make it out. 

It’s a good idea to use screen-friendly fonts in all the materials for your flex-hybrid classes, since students participating remotely will read even “class handouts” on a screen.

Another way to use fonts to promote better screen-reading is to limit the overall number of fonts you use. Keep it to two or three, max. Otherwise, your Canvas pages and documents will look really “busy” and your students will have trouble following them.

In general, even well-designed serif fonts are less good for screen-reading than sans-serif fonts, so save serif fonts for headers and use sans-serif fonts for body text. Sans-serif fonts like Verdana are also more legible for users with dyslexia.

Choose high-contrast font colors in relation to your background. This is also essential for accessibility (e.g., people with colorblindness or low vision).

Formatting

There is actually a whole science of “eye-tracking” studies, which follow people’s eye movements as they read on screens. The results of these studies are often presented as “heat maps” that show the places people’s eyes focused on the screen the most. 

Some of the most important takeaways from eye-tracking studies are:

  • Our eyes are drawn strongly to images and to content associated with images.
  • We read screens in an “F” pattern, reading most of the way across the initial line or two of text and then making shorter and shorter passes across the screen as our eyes move down the page. 

You don’t have to be a graphic designer to design Canvas pages, presentations, and virtual “handouts” to work in harmony with your students’ natural screen-reading patterns. Here are some good ways to do it:

  • Keep your sentences and paragraphs short (shorter than you would in a document intended to be read on paper).
  • Use headings, subheadings, and bulleted lists, which have a tendency to partially reset the “F” pattern. Headings and subheadings are also essential for screen-reader navigation, so they are important accessibility features as well.
  • Use (but don’t over-use) bold type to highlight important points – many people skim documents on-screen and this will help them “get the gist”, at least.
  • Use images and/or thumbnail videos, particularly next to text you want to be sure your students read. Include alt-text for your images for students using screen-readers or cases where the image fails to open.
  • For slide presentations, use only a few bullet points or lines of text per slide.
  • For PDFs, use wider margins than you would on a paper document (people’s eyes have a shorter sweep across screens than on paper).

Real-Time vs Asynchronous Instruction: A Reflection

By Caroline Toy, CLT

Important update: we have added additional consideration of student workload that we strongly suggest you read in the blue box below. Updated 3/31/20, 10:30am.

As you work to shift your classes to remote instruction (thank you!), you may be contemplating using real-time (synchronous) teaching, asynchronous strategies, or a combination. What do those terms mean? What’s the difference? Which is better?

Those are all questions I was asking about eight months ago, as I designed my first all-online course. I began my teaching career as an outdoor educator, and then moved to teaching in-person college classes in the humanities. I was nervous about maintaining engagement and interaction with students I would not meet face-to-face. Spoiler: there have been some hiccups, which is natural. But overall, it’s turned out really well.

In my experience, the success of remote instruction really depends on interactivity. (We talk about that in the COVID-19 response materials here.) Content mastery is important, as are assignments and other forms of assessment. But interaction is the foundation on which other successes sit. That’s where the synchronous-vs-asynchronous question comes in.

What do Synchronous and Asynchronous mean?

You actually already use both synchronous and asynchronous learning strategies in your classroom. Synchronous simply means that all your students (and you) are participating in learning experiences at the same time. Asynchronous means people participate at different times, but still interact. The vast majority of in-person instruction is synchronous, but if you’ve ever had students collaborate through a Google Doc or email, participate in a Canvas discussion board, or do peer reviews outside of class, you have used interactive, asynchronous teaching strategies.

In remote instruction, synchronous teaching takes place through real-time interactions. The strategy we’re all hearing about right now, and that many of us will use next week, is videoconference lecturing and discussion at your usual class time. There are others; for example, you could invite all of your students to participate in a text-based chat, or you could have students meet synchronously in breakout groups for part of your class time, and then rejoin for full-class follow-up.

Asynchronous teaching, on the other hand, involves a range of ways students and the instructor can interact without being present in real time. Using discussion forums is a prime example. So are group collaborations, peer review tasks, video lectures or clips followed by reflection questions, reading quizzes, thought-provoking surveys, and feedback videos from you. (Canvas is designed to facilitate all of these, and that’s one reason it can seem difficult to learn to use.)

Which is better?

The short answer is that it depends. What are you trying to achieve? What is your class about? What materials do you need to deliver? How much time would you need students to gather synchronously? What are your students already used to? Do you have students with disabilities that make videoconferencing difficult, technological limitations like not having the right devices or good internet, or unusual responsibilities during the pandemic like picking up a new job or taking care of kids?

There’s no straightforward answer to this question, and there are good arguments for prioritizing both. There are probably more good pedagogical arguments for prioritizing asynchronous learning (which I’ll explain), but right now, some students want to stick as closely as possible to the in-person format they already know. I currently teach an online course that is 95% asynchronous, an approach I believe in strongly. However, given that students want to be comfortable, instructors are learning many new technical skills very quickly, and we are adapting on the fly, more synchronous teaching may be needed. Nonetheless, it’s important to include some asynchronous elements, and to understand that some students simply cannot participate synchronously under current conditions.

Synchronous Instruction: Pros and Cons

Synchronous learning has one very big pro, and it’s the same one that deters some faculty from teaching online in general: there’s something about face-to-face, real-time instruction that motivates many students, establishes relationships, enables instructors to “read the room” and adapt on the fly, and is just fun. All of those things can be accomplished asynchronously, but there’s no denying that it’s trickier. The second, and in our situation almost equally important, advantage to synchronous instruction is that we already know how to do it. Learning to use Meet or Zoom might be a technological challenge, but once you’re in the “room” with students, you know how to lecture, how to quickly and clearly answer questions, and ways to prompt discussion.

However, synchronous learning has some serious disadvantages too. There are accessibility problems with some videoconferencing platforms for students who have auditory and/or visual disabilities. Now that students are at home, possibly in lockdown, they may not be able to consistently meet during class time, get access to a computer, or have sufficient internet for videoconferencing. (Live text-based chat sessions can help a lot, especially for students who can’t do streaming video or who have kids or parents making noise in the background.) For some students, sitting in front of a screen, even a live feed, for an hour is not the most engaging–and that’s magnified for longer classes.

Asynchronous Instruction: Pros and Cons

Asynchronous instruction has the great advantage of offering more strategies for teaching and learning, and a wider range of ways for students to demonstrate participation and competence. That means it can serve a wider range of learning styles. It is also generally more accessible for students with disabilities, students with family or work responsibilities, and students in other time zones. As such, it is probably more equitable; Ellen Zeman and I have written about equity and accessibility in the time of pandemic here.

In my experience, being able to participate on their own schedule gives students more flexibility to participate well. The quantity and quality of participation from almost all students in a well-structured asynchronous discussion forum can easily exceed a good day in the classroom (I am consistently astonished by the level of participation I see online compared to in-person). And for the simpler asynchronous activities, like discussion forums, the learning curve for participation is pretty easy.

On the other hand, asynchronous learning does not have face-to-face contact. Some people find this de-motivating. It is harder to assess whether students are “getting it” in the moment. It’s definitely harder to adapt on the fly.

So what should I do?

Short answer, part one: in the first week back after Spring Break, you should start with whatever strategy you think you can reasonably manage.

You may be feeling like your course has become this, and that’s OK. The goal right now is continuity. This horse may have a stick-figure leg, but she’s still standing!

You are still learning and navigating remote instruction, and so are your students. If your strategy is not ideal, you can adapt (and the CLT can help). You might start out synchronously and decide that technical snafus are too annoying, or that it’s easier to have students discuss in a forum than try to call on people in a videoconference. Or you might start asynchronously and find that your students are getting listless and need a synchronous session every week to liven things up.

Short answer, part two: for the remainder of the semester, once you feel a little more comfortable, try to use a mix of both! While in a natively online course, we would recommend focusing on asynchronous strategies, right now you have a lot of flexibility alongside your challenges. You can weight synchronous or asynchronous more heavily.

If you are weighting asynchronous learning (by using peer interactions, discussion forums that both you and your students participate in, pre-recorded videos, reflection assignments, and/or other activities), it’s great to have a weekly short-ish synchronous session, in which you cover content, do Q&A, have a discussion, or review. Record these sessions so students can review them asynchronously. Offering live office hours also makes you accessible to your students.

If you are weighting synchronous learning (by delivering most of your class live), make sure you include asynchronous follow-up strategies. For example, shortening your weekly in-person time by forty-five minutes and adding a discussion forum students must post to twice, interacting with each other and with you, provides a participation opportunity for students who cannot be present for some or all of the live meetings. Record all the live meetings (Meet makes this easy) so those students still have access to them. While you can require students to be present, we encourage you to be very flexible with students who have difficult circumstances. And we strongly recommend asynchronous assessments, so no one is unable to take a test because they cannot guarantee access to a computer during class time.

Important Update: As of 3/31, we are receiving reports that some students have experienced a substantial increase in their workload as a result of remote instruction. Please consider the following as you incorporate asynchronous and synchronous strategies:

  • The workload of synchronous instruction may not be limited to the hours students are present in a videoconference or watching a recording of it, because for many students, it is more difficult and time-consuming to review and practice lecture material delivered remotely.
  • Substantive discussions posts take time to create. When students need to review their peers’ posts and create their own original comment, each discussion post is equivalent to about half an hour of work.
  • At present, many students are struggling to find uninterrupted work time and space and are also under enormous stress. A normal amount of time for coursework can be difficult; an increase can be impossible

This does not mean that you should not incorporate multiple strategies! You can address the workload problem by cutting down synchronous session time; for example, if you ask for three discussion posts a week (90 minutes of work that would usually happen in class), go down to an hour and a half of synch time by having one live meeting per week or multiple shorter meetings, aiming for three hours total. Or you can limit the number of posts (two per week, with two hours of synch sessions).

Ask for support

The CLT staff, the wonderful members of the Library and SMARTspace staff, and faculty members who are currently assisting us have rich and varied experience with in-person and online teaching, and with using Canvas. Whether you question is in the family of “I have to do this to successfully teach my course and I don’t know how” or “I think my students would benefit from this new strategy, and I’m wondering if there’s a way to do it easily,” we can advise you. Please do not hesitate to contact us at clt@champlain.edu.

Dee Fink’s Taxonomy of Significant Learning

Dee Fink’s Taxonomy of Significant Learning is an essential model for faculty to consider as they design their courses and determine their pedagogical approach.  For many years college curriculum was based on the available textbooks.    The professor’s role was to settle on a book that adequately covered a subject and teach that book, chapter by chapter.  The faculty member’s goal was to cover the content.  In the early 1950’s, educators collaborated with curriculum and test designers to create teaching and learning materials for the modern age.  Professors began to design courses to meet particular objectives established by their institutions or perceived as market demand.  In the mid-1950’s Benjamin Bloom conceived a learning taxonomy that has been a foundation for higher education curriculum design.  For Bloom, optimal teaching and learning occurred when instructors systematically guided students through six increasingly complex levels of subject or skill mastery.  In 2013, Dee Fink suggested a revision to Bloom’s linear model.  Fink proposes that significant learning occurs when six critical components work in conjunction to enhance each other.  The more key components a professor includes in her lesson, unit and course, the more significant the learning will be for the student.

Helping Students with Anxiety

We are a few weeks into the semester.  Already, I have had several faculty members express their concern for students who struggle to manage their anxiety.  
This week the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article and video in which college students explain their anxiety.  One student says, “When someone shows concern, or simply listens, that can make all the difference”
Below is a quick method that professors can use in the first few minutes of class to show students care and concern.  The BONUS:  even students who are not struggling with anxiety will benefit from NAPS.