Collaborative Learning and Cognitive Load
July 24th, 2009
Although many educators have probably accepted that collaborative learning is a good thing for learning. The research is, in fact, mixed. This is one of those clear examples where we need to move past the research question of, “Is collaborative learning better than individual work?” and get into when collaborative learning is the best strategy to use and what context needs to be set up for it to be successful.
Kirschner, Paas, & Kirschner take a look at collaborative learning in the view of cognitive load theory in a recent article in Educational Psychology Review. First, they walk through an interesting list of why the research on the impact of collaborative learning may be mixed, including:
- Learning is often only indirectly tested
- Use of naturalistic settings that have many confounding factors
- Focus on surface level characteristics (e.g., group size)
- Focus on group performance instead of individual results
They then remind us of cognitive load theory, which is based on the idea that we have finite resources with which to process incoming information. Finally, they suggest the collaborative group can be seen as an information processing system. In this case, the cognitive load could be distributed across individuals. Based on this hypothesis, collaborative learning would be most effective for complex learning tasks that require a high cognitive load. Less complex tasks would be learned less efficiently in the collaborative scenario because the extra cognitive processing capability is not needed and the “cost” of using so many people outweighs the benefit. The authors cite preliminary evidence that individual learning is more effective in simple recall tasks and collaborative learning is more effective with complex problem-solving tasks.
I think the idea of cognitive load is powerful and has significantly contributed to instructional design of e-learning applications. It certainly has potential to explain some findings regarding the efficacy of collaborative learning, although I think there are likely other factors at play yet to be discovered.
Kirschner, F., Paas, F., & Kirschner, P. (2008). A Cognitive Load Approach to Collaborative Learning: United Brains for Complex Tasks Educational Psychology Review, 21 (1), 31-42 DOI: 10.1007/s10648-008-9095-2
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August 10th, 2009 at 10:39 am
[...] Psychology Review devoted a recent issue to cognitive load theory. I recently blogged about an article relating the theory to collaborative learning. A second article looks at how our [...]