Learning Science for Instructional Designers

CHAPTER 3

Architectural Artifacts

•  The cognitive artifacts important for learning

•  How we process media

When you learn a new skill, you may hear certain mantras repeated. In tennis or baseball, you may hear “Swing through the ball.” In physics, it’s “Draw the forces.” In learning design, you may hear “Manage the cognitive load.” The point is that the instructors are not thinking about the underpinning cognitive architecture; instead, they’re thinking about the thinking and learning that runs on the architecture. And, our architecture leads to some artifacts that are important in designing learning.

Thus, we’ve got to account for how to present information, what to present, how much to present, and more. We need to be careful about what ...