Reducing Cognitive Load in eLearning Experiences

Designing an impactful eLearning experience for students requires thoughtful work from the instructional designer to ensure content focus.

Created on Canva: Reducing Cognitive Load in eLearning Experiences

Process of Creation

I chose to focus on the design of impactful eLearning experience, to ensure that the cognitive load required for students is reduced when appropriate and beneficial. In order to create an engaging and useful tool for educators to apply my findings on best practices for designing eLearning, I chose to use the platform Canva for my learning tool. Canva allowed me to display the best practices of reducing cognitive load in eLearning in an aesthetically appealing and engaging visual tool. Canva is an easy-to-use digital platform for creating educational graphics, and you can travel to my Tech Tools #7 blog post to learn more about this digital platform.

Application in Elementary Education Teaching and Learning

While I will likely not use webinars in my own classroom, due to the younger age of my students, I believe that webinars can be applied to elementary professional development experiences. Particularly in the age of remote teaching and learning, educators are having to become more knowledge about how to engage teachers in a virtual professional experience. By utilizing engaging and content-specific webinars, teachers are able to attend the webinars that are applicable to their interests and needs, making professional development experiences more meaningful (and effective) for teachers.

Effectiveness of Webinars in Elementary Education

Thoughtfully designed webinars for professional development purposes at the elementary level allows teachers to cater their PD experiences to their own needs. This availability of learning and engagement, in my opinion, will lead to greater teacher engagement and take-away learning from PD opportunities. When teachers get to decide how they spend their own learning time, rather than being required to attend common PD experiences, teachers are able to focus their energy on learning appropriate to their needs, therefore being more effective. And when webinars are designed in simplistic and engaging ways, teachers will get even more out of them.