Research on Cognitive Load Theory and Its Design Implications for Problem Solving Instruction

The purpose of this study was to develop the problem solving instruction facilitating novice learner to represent the problem. For the purpose, we mainly focused on three aspects of problem solving. First, learner should represent the targeted problem and its solutions for problem solving. Second, from crucial notions of cognitive load theory, learner's mental load should be optimized for problem representation. Third, for optimizing students' mental load, experts may support making their thinking more visible and mapping from their intuition to expert practice. We drew the design principles as follows. First, since providing worked examples for the targeted problem has been considered to minimize analogical errors as well as reduce cognitive load in problem representation at line of problem solving and instructional research, it is needed to elaborate the way of designing. The worked example alternatively corresponds to expert schema that consists of domain knowledge as well as strategies for expert-like problem representation and solution. Thus, it may help learner to represent what the problem is and how to solve it in problem space. Second, principle can be that expert should scaffold learner's self-explanations. Because the students are unable to elicit the rationale from worked example, the expert's triggering scaffold may be critical in that process. The unexplained and incomplete parts of the example should be completed not by expert's scaffold but by themselves. Critical portion of the expert's scaffold is to explain about how to apply and represent the given problem, since students' initial representations may be reached at superficial or passive pattern of example elaboration. Finally, learner's mental model on the designated problem domain should be externalized or visualized for one's reflection as well as expert's scaffolding activities. The visualization helps learner to identify one's partial or incorrect model. The correct model of learner could be constructed by expert's help.