Even though our brain is like a huge capacity hard drive, receiving too much information at a time can make it lose out on some data.
Sometimes when you are learning about a subject you have little to no knowledge about, you tend to forget what the instructor said a minute ago. This overburdening of the brain with knowledge is what cognitive load feels like.
Our working memory or short-term memory cannot handle so much information at a time. It would be simpler for your brain to understand and retain the information if you broke it up into smaller bits.
There are three types of cognitive load. In other words, there are three reasons why your cognitive load increases.
Intrinsic
Intrinsic load occurs when dealing with a very complex piece of information. Whether the information is complex depends on many factors, including your pre-existing knowledge. For example, solving a customer complaint about product features may be challenging for a new employee, but it’ll be a breeze for a senior.
Extraneous
Your sensory organs receive every information they can see, hear, smell, touch, and taste. So even if you are trying to listen carefully to the lecture, something outside the window or a notification on your mobile phone can cause distraction. Your working memory has two things to focus on, so the load increases.
Germane
When your working memory receives information, it removes all the unwanted data and forwards the relevant information to the long-term memory for long-term retention.
A learning management system is the most suitable choice for conducting a training session for your employees. It can help you reduce the cognitive load your employees feel during the training, ensuring better retention and compilation rates.
Let’s learn more about what an LMS is and how it helps in reducing cognitive load.
What Is An LMS?
An LMS is a software program designed specifically for managing all eLearning tasks. A robust, all-in-one LMS for compliance training can help you host the training program, create and manage the content, and conduct synchronous and asynchronous sessions. It can also help you monitor and track employee performances, analyze the performance and success of your course, integrate with the existing system, and much more.
LMSs gather all the course material in one place and make it accessible to the users anytime and anywhere. You can use LMS for partner training programs, compliance training, employee onboarding, customer onboarding, and other learning and development programs. You can also use advanced features like gamification, community building, and simulations.
How Can An LMS Help Reduce The Cognitive Load Of Your Employees?
Switching from a traditional classroom to type training to online training facilitated by LMS can help reduce your employees’ cognitive load. Moreover, training via an LMS is way cheaper than a classroom session. Let’s see how an LMS reduces cognitive load.
It Allows Micro-Learning
The cognitive load of employees increases when you give a lot of information simultaneously. The working memory tends to forget some information to analyze the new information. Microcontent is the ultimate solution to cognitive load.
What is micro-content?
A tweet is an example of micro-content. In the context of employee training, some examples include infographics, flashcards, and brief videos that are 2 to 5 minutes long.
You can break up the entire lesson into a few 5-minute videos rather than forcing your staff to sit through an hour-long session. It helps them remember everything they learned. Moreover, since it’s only 5 minutes, they are less likely to get bored and distracted.
Micro-content gives your brain enough time to comprehend the information and store it in a relevant folder for long-term storage.
An LMS lets you use micro-learning very easily. You can break the content into modules and then modules into a few chapters. After every topic ends, you can add an assessment to ensure retention.
Learners Can Pause If They Are Overloaded
When learners are already exhausted from office work and personal commitments, forcing them to attend a training session won’t help in retention.
They’ll attend the session for the certificate, which nullifies your goal of making your workforce skilled. With LMS, learners have the freedom to choose when and where they want to complete the training. If you use micro-content, they can even complete the training on the go.
Using Video Formats To Explain Complex Things Becomes Easier
For sessions like data security, the content is bound to have some jargon. It is unavoidable. But if you add an animated video or some other visual aid, it can be easier for corporate learners to comprehend, thus reducing their cognitive load.
Help Them Navigate A Learning Path Easily
Poor navigation also leads to increased cognitive load. You can create an easy learning path for learners on an LMS with a user-friendly design and easy navigation. Good UX helps them stay focused and improves the course completion rate.
Use Of Multimedia
You can only explain some things using one media format. For example, showing a video along with the audio would help greatly to explain how the software works instead of giving a written guide.
You can also consider how some people find it difficult to remember the text, but they can easily remember videos and images.
To cater to these different learning habits, LMSs offer you to use suitable media formats. A suggestion from us would be for you to use various media formats to keep things interesting.
Can Revisit Anytime
The learners might focus on learning and jotting down the information in a classroom session, overburdening their working memory. On an LMS, the users can access learning materials anytime and anywhere. So even if they forget some details, they can go back.
Bottom Line
For instance, think of a typical compliance training course; the course content might have a lot of jargon that increases the cognitive load. In this situation, making your content easy to understand (simple words and a lot of visual aid) can help you.
Thus, along with an LMS, you should also focus on how you present the content to your employees. It will considerably affect the cognitive load your employees feel.
