Ask yourself: What will my course participants be able to do after completing my course that they can’t do now?

Extraneous cognitive load is information that is not a built-in part of the subject matter. For example, let’s say someone is trying to teach you how to make a sandwich. The subject matter is not complicated. But if the explanation is complex or unclear it burdens

You will get your learners’ attention if you make it clear to them that your course is going to provide something that they want and need in order to make their lives better.

The information inside the package might be very big or very heavy, making the package difficult to fit or carry through the narrow doorway. The package could be bulky or poorly designed so that it won’t fit through the doorway even if the information inside the package, by itself, would fit. The workers trying to get the package through the

Provide performance-based feedback at every step of the learning sequence. Help students generalize the learning to a larger context beyond the immediate lesson.

What will my course participants be able to do after completing my course that they can’t do now? It can be harder than it seems to answer that question.

The term cognitive load describes the difficulty involved in getting new information through the brain’s narrow doorway so it can be stored in schemas for future retrieval.2 If cognitive load is high, then learning is difficult.

the substance of your course itself is the knowledge you impart through it.

In order to be able to “cross the street when the light is green,” children first must understand what green is. They must be able to discriminate green from other colors.20