Germane Load

How do you think we might work with teachers to explain and optimize the germane load? This is such a great question, Demetri, and thank you for the excellent article at http://www.usask.ca/education/coursework/802papers/chipperfield/index.htm .

It took me a while to read the article, as it was new information for me, but so well written and profound. In light of the article, I think that we could show teachers an animated, audio-enhanced movie, or slide-show, that would provide examples of the principles of design as laid out by Mayer and Moreno (2002). We should show examples of what we are trying to teach them about germane load. "Learning, changing a novice to an expert and the formation of new schema adds to the load on working memory. Working memory must process this new information into advanced and more complex schema...this is called germane load" (Chipperfield, 2004). Teachers should be taught, as all learners, in a way that reduces their extrinsic load (all of the external distractors). The staff development piece should be held in an environment with as little distraction as possible. Staff should be made comfortable with some ground rules, such as paying attention to adult learners needs for using the facilities and turning off cell phones. The environment should be discussed at the beginning of the presentation in order to set the learner's minds at rest, and allow the brain to focus on creating schema and integrating the schema into long-term memory. Paper and pencil, or computers should be made available for those students who are gaining more than seven new ideas from the presentation. This way, the working memory is not overburdened, and there is a place to spill over into a "holding place" until the brain processes the initial seven pieces of information. That is one strategy I applied when reading this article; I took notes on a Word doc to read at a later time, because the information was dense. I wanted to move from novice to expert in the use of the language about germane load, so I took notes and pulled out the important bits that I thought were relevant to Demetri's question.

Acknowledging that each person's intrinsic load is what they bring to the table, the germane load is the area which we can effectively affect through the design of multimedia. Teachers would need to see examples of slides, much as we made in week one's assignment, side-by-side that show the effectiveness of Mayer and Moreno's principles. Teachers should be given time to create their own examples to demonstrate a model and then the problem to be solved. This feels key to the learner's aquisition of new knowledge, which, as teachers, should be our ultimate goal.