Mental overload, the enemy of learning

The need to avoid mental overload is one of the 8 pillars of learning

When preparing your course on energy transition, you want to address legislative, social and technological aspects at the same time: you therefore combine these three approaches in a single diagram summarizing all the elements to remember, in the hope that your learners will seize all its wealth. If your intention is commendable, be careful not to lose your audience! In fact, the need to avoid the mental overload Is one of 8 pillars of learning excerpts from our exclusive report: “The pillars of sustainable learning”.

Mental overload takes place when a learner processes Too much information at the same time or that they are too complex compared to his initial level of knowledge.

We know that when a learner is in a state of mental overload, he has difficulty representing the concepts to be learned, remembers partial or erroneous information, and is therefore in great difficulty when it comes to mobilizing them... This is in particular why it is essential to properly calibrate your educational goals.

Understanding and avoiding overload

If mental overload interferes with learning, it is in part because the amount of information that our brain can process at the same time is limited. This limit is that of our working memory., which stores relevant information from our environment according to our needs at the moment. Working memory is also the gateway to long-term memory, which keeps track of our learning, and then allows us to use it in new situations.

If too much information arrives at the same time, our working memory is no longer able to give each piece of information the attention it deserves; inevitably, some of that information will fall by the wayside. In a learning context, this is particularly problematic: when trying to understand a concept, you generally need several pieces of information to build a good representation of it. However, correctly representing the concepts to be learned has an impact not only on memorization, but especially on learners' ability to use their knowledge when they need it. Putting your learners under a mental load can therefore block the development of new skills.

Thus, the way in which learning content is divided, in space and time, plays a decisive role in the transmission of skills. Sequencing the elements to be transmitted as finely as possible reinforces learners' memory, but above all gives them the means to mobilize these new elements in a concrete situation.

‍

Practical advice for teachers & trainers

• Take your learners forward little by little : one step at a time is enough to learn to walk! Cut out the notions and skills to be acquired as much as possible.
• Take into account the initial level of your learners : what you take for a single concept should probably be explained in several stages to your novice learners! On the other hand, the more experienced make connections between several concepts, which will form a unique concept in their memory.
• Choose the right time to cross-reference one concept to another : the more premature the connections that the learner must make, the greater the risk of overload.
• Do not hesitate to present the same information in several ways : presenting only one concept at a time does not mean being limited to a single text or a single image, on the contrary, your learners will remember better if you vary the formats, as explained in our article on The 5 senses at the service of learning.

It's up to you to find the right balance!