Cognitive Architecture and Instructional Design: 20 Years Later

Cognitive load theory aims to explain how the information processing load induced by learning tasks can affect students’ ability to process new information and to construct knowledge in long-term memory. Its basic premise is that human cognitive processing is heavily constrained by our limited working memory which can only process a limited number of information elements at a time. Cognitive load is increased when unnecessary demands are imposed on the cognitive system. If cognitive load becomes too high, it hampers learning and transfer. Such demands include inadequate instructional methods to educate students about a subject as well as unnecessary distractions of the environment. Cognitive load may also be increased by processes that are germane to learning, such as instructional methods that emphasise subject information that is intrinsically complex. In order to promote learning and transfer, cognitive load is best managed in such a way that cognitive processing irrelevant to learning is minimised and cognitive processing germane to learning is optimised, always within the limits of available cognitive capacity (van Merriënboer et al. 2006).

The roots of cognitive load theory can be traced back to 1982 (Sweller and Levine 1982), but a first full description of the theory was given in the 1988 article Cognitive Load During Problem Solving: Effects on Learning (Sweller 1988). In the next decade, many cognitive load effects and associated instructional methods were investigated by a small group of researchers located at the University of New South Wales, Australia, and the University of Twente, the Netherlands. This close collaboration led to an updated description of cognitive load theory that was published in the 1998 article Cognitive Architecture and Instructional Design (Sweller et al. 1998). After 1998, cognitive load theory quickly became one of the most popular theories in the field of educational psychology and instructional design, with researchers from across the globe contributing to its further development. The 1998 article became one of the most cited articles in the educational field with currently over 5000 citations in Google Scholar. The main aim of this follow-up article is to reflect on the evolution of cognitive load theory over the past 20 years, taking the 1998 article as a starting point and a description of future directions as the end point.

The structure of this article is as follows. The second section following this introduction provides a short history of cognitive load theory, first discussing the human cognitive architecture as presented in the 1998 article and then describing the categories of cognitive load followed by the seven cognitive load effects discussed in that article. The third section discusses the major developments in cognitive load theory between 1998 and 2018: first, the strengthening of its theoretical basis by grounding it in evolutionary psychology; second, its extension to the level of course and curriculum design in the four-component instructional design (4C/ID) model; third, introducing a series of new cognitive load effects including so-called compound effects; and fourth, introducing new methods for measuring the different categories of cognitive load. The fourth section discusses future developments of cognitive load theory, in particular, cognitive load in relation to resource depletion; self-regulated learning; emotions, stress and uncertainty and, finally, human movement. The fifth and final section provides some general conclusions.