Why is Psychology a Useful Guide to Instructional Design?
Cognitive science is the study of how our brain processes information. In particular, it focuses on the way we think, remember, solve problems, and make decisions. It is a mixture of psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics. But why is psychology so important, especially in Instructional Design? When it comes to learning, psychology is the secret behind it all. It tells us how students take in new information, retain it, and use it later. Therefore, once Instructional Designers understand how learning actually works, they can create effective, engaging, and memorable educational experiences.
If you are an Instructional Designer, you should know that designing lessons without understanding how the brain actually learns is futile. Sure, you can build the right thing, but will it work? Will it stick with your students? Cognitive science provides its principles for making Instructional Design meaningful. Let’s talk briefly about the theory of mental load. Mental load is the mental effort required to learn something. If you overload people’s brains with too much information at once, it will shut down. But if you distribute content at the right time and give breaks, you free their brains. Then there is memory and retention. Psychology teaches you that learning needs to be reinforced over time. Finally, let’s not forget about motivation. People learn better when they are interested in what they are learning, and psychology helps us better understand what motivates.
Below, we’ll dive deeper into the science of cognition and how to apply it to Instructional Design, structuring your lessons in a way that makes it easier for your students’ brains to receive, understand, and retain information.
How to Integrate Psychology into Instructional Design
Motivation and Participation
When it comes to designing lessons, motivation is what turns passive students into active participants. Without it, even the most well-designed courses fail. So, let’s talk about how to add more motivation to your Instructional Design using some cognitive science principles. According to psychology, our brains enjoy challenge, feedback, and control. This is where self-determination theory comes into play. According to it, motivation includes autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Basically, students want to feel like they have a choice, are good at what they do, and are connected to others.
To incorporate this, start by giving students control over their learning. For example, let them choose topics, decide how to do their work, or set their own goals. Next, consider the measurement. When you add mind-based game elements to lessons, such as leaderboards, badges, or progress bars, the process becomes a competition that students really want to win, thus aligning with the self-determination theory mentioned above.
Information Breach
Breaking information into smaller chunks is a logical way to organize learning material. According to cognitive science, our brain can handle a certain amount of new information at once. Instead of delivering an entire lesson full of information, which leads to overloading your students, break the learning material into manageable chunks that are easy for the brain to process and remember.
How does this work? Imagine teaching World War 2. You don’t present all the important battles, dates, historical figures, and alliances in one module. No, you tear it down. Start with an introduction that covers key events and concepts. Once your students have digested that, move on to issues such as politics, economics and society. Then, introduce the great wars, followed by life during the war, propaganda, women’s involvement, and other related topics. Finally, present the aftermath and life after the war. In general, to avoid information overload, you should organize the content into sections or modules. If you stick to that rule, you are more likely to create successful courses.
Scaffolding Reading
Scaffolding in Instructional Design helps students become comfortable with new ideas without feeling overwhelmed. Let’s say you teach about digital marketing. You wouldn’t expect students to plan and run social media ads perfectly from day one, right? Instead, start small, perhaps by explaining key concepts. As they get comfortable, they slowly introduce more complex tasks, such as KPIs. The final step will be to run simulated digital marketing campaigns across all platforms. Scaffolding means increasing the complexity of tasks as students develop their skills.
How do you do this in course design? If your students are beginners, you want to slow things down, as we mentioned above. Give them easily achievable goals so they don’t feel overwhelmed and give up before they even start. You can also use checklists to guide yourself. As they become more comfortable, you can begin to reduce the support. Maybe you give them problem-solving tasks instead of walking them through each step. For advanced students, just give them challenges and tasks that they can tackle on their own.
Active Learning
Active learning is actually based on cognitive science. This is because when people participate in their own learning through problem solving, discussions, and hands-on activities, they retain more knowledge. Why? Their brains work instead of passively receiving information. Psychologists call this “deep processing.” When students have to do something with the content, such as solving a problem, debating, or experimenting, they make logical connections and use different parts of their brain.
For example, instead of just teaching a concept, give students a problem to solve individually or in groups. Or, give them a real-world scenario and encourage them to apply what they’ve learned. You will notice that they are not just memorizing the material but they are thinking carefully, collaborating, and, most importantly, learning in a way that lives with them. For a more advanced approach, include discussions where students can exchange ideas, challenge each other, and defend their ideas. Discussions keep the subjects engaged, which improves their understanding of the subject.
Testing
Testing shouldn’t be boring or stressful. When used properly, they actually improve learning. Let’s start by introducing two types of assessment, formative and summative. Formative assessment is used to assess students during learning, while summative involves assessing what they have learned at the end. In both cases, it is important to give students timely feedback about their progress. Cognitive science tells us that this is key to helping them retain information and use it to move forward. Therefore, it is best to combine both types of surveys and allow your audience to process the feedback and use it moving forward.
Finally, it is also important to encourage students to check their progress. That’s called metacognition, and it means they think about their own thinking. It improves retention and helps them become more aware of their learning processes, so be sure to include opportunities for them to reflect on what worked and what didn’t.
Using Technology
Before you incorporate all the new technology and tools into your Instructional Design, let’s talk about how to do it right without overwhelming your students. First, use multimedia wisely. Combine text with images, videos, and infographics to align your lessons with dual coding theory. In this way, you help your students process information visually and verbally, which means they will retain more of it. But don’t overdo it. Just because you can add a video, infographic, and pop quiz doesn’t mean you should. Balance is important.
There are also adaptive learning technologies and AI out there. That allows you to tailor lessons to fit each student’s unique pace, interests, and ability level. Whether it’s adjusting difficulty based on performance or recommending additional resources, AI can help your students stay on track without feeling overwhelmed. While exploring all the ways to make your lessons tech-friendly, make sure everything adds value and isn’t just for decorative purposes.
The conclusion
When you apply cognitive science to Instructional Design, the benefits are obvious. Lessons become more engaging, students retain information better, and overall results improve. Concepts such as managing cognitive load or using dual coding theory help create things that match the way the brain works. However, be sure to constantly test and improve your lessons because what works for one group of students may not work for another. Ultimately, combining cognitive science and continuous improvement allows you to create smart, effective courses that support your students every step of the way.
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