Effects of the Cognitive Level of Thought on Learning Complex Material

The main goal here is to introduce a new perspective through which cognitive learning theory plays an active role in instructional hypermedia design and evaluation through testing educational mediums that elicit two distinct levels of cognitive processing for materials of different levels of complexity. Results indicate that if the cognitive level required is high and the materials are more complex, then a retardation effect occurs to learning, while a lower cognitive level requirement achieves better results will all types of materials. This highlights the importance of taking cognitive requirements into consideration during the design of instructional hypermedia to produce “Cognitively Informed Systems”. This perspective will allow a designer to analyze the same system from the perspective of how the presentation style and medium are likely to interact with students’ cognitive processes during learning. This perspective is predicted to help lower the cognitive load demands of various instructional hypermedia systems in order to increase the educational impact of these systems and avoid any learning inhibitors to arise.