Classroom is well known as a tool to aid student and teacher organisation, but can it help to reduce cognitive load on students too?

Despite being somewhat sceptical of any hype around shiny edutech, I’m excited to be joining the Google Education Summit here in Kathmandu this weekend and talking about Google Classroom. I love this great tool for so many reasons. Some are simple organisational ones: it’s the only thing that’s brought any school I’ve worked at even close to a consistent method for setting homework; it completely removes the excuse of “I forgot what I was supposed to do” from students and it adds reminders for assignments I need to collect to my google calendar so that I never forget to take work in. However, when I’ve seen Google Classroom used within the real classroom, I’ve sometimes found it to be more of a distraction from learning than something to augment it. If students are just using this digital space to access the lesson’s slides, which are already displayed on the board, surely this actually adds to their cognitive load. Nevertheless, as I’ve become more aware of research, I’ve streamlined the way I use Classroom. I now believe the use of Classroom to extend learning outside of school has had a real impact on my classes’ progress, especially at A level, where so much of the study is independent.

A levels are perhaps more challenging than ever and we have to get our students to cover huge amounts of complex content, retaining and adapting it for summative exams. My A level English literature students are currently reading a novel, two plays, a collection of Romantic poetry and countless critical essays on all of these texts. In pretty much every lesson, we have four or five new words to define, a complex plot to follow and many subtle inferences to draw from the writer’s language or imagery. I regularly expect my students to read supplementary journal articles and other fiction outside of the lessons, drawing links to the texts we are studying. This is as it should be, but it’s hardly surprising that some students really struggle with the transition from GCSE to A Level. I’ve found that Google Classroom has helped me to structure students’ independent study very effectively. 

Removing Extraneous Cognitive Load:

Cognitive load theory, after Sweller, claims that by reducing the extra mental effort required to learn new information, we can assure greater learner success. In ‘Why Don’t Students Like School’ Daniel Willingham uses the example of a teacher who wants students to learn about the Underground Railroad and, as a seemingly engaging activity, get students to bake biscuits using a historical recipe. Willingham notes that the students would actually be thinking about how to measure out ingredients and if “memory is the residue of thought” they are not likely to remember the right things. 

So, there’s a lot to be said for having students repeat the same or similar processes for learning, meaning that their actions become automatic and they can focus on the new content. Every lesson, I set students a ‘prepare for learning’ task on Classroom. Students know where to find work and can set up google calendar to automatically remind them of it. This means that there’s no need to focus on redundant information about deadlines etc. It’s all there for them. The routine also hopefully helps with potential stress associated with the increased workload at A level too. 

Retaining a High Level of Intrinsic Challenge:

While I want my A level students to be able to access the course, it’s crucial to retain the high level of challenge which is intrinsic to the content. Our A level schemes are planned to go beyond what is necessary for the exam. For instance, this year I taught my Year 13s about the history of scientific racism to extend their understanding of post-colonial criticism. We use terminology no examiner would necessarily expect. Again, as I’ve learned about CLT, I’ve used Classroom to help me manage this challenge. Any independent task is simplified into numbered steps, like the one below. I usually draw students’ attention to the most important vocabulary, often with a simple glossary starter before they begin reading a text. After reading, I normally set generative tasks too. Students are expected to act on information in a quick, brief way. For example, by putting it into their own words, selecting the top three most important points, generating two questions etc.  They are still accessing very challenging texts and content, but are given a structure with which to format it, rather than struggling with every element at once. 

I don’t always control tasks so tightly though. To be prepared for university or college, these advanced students need to be used to reading complex texts with little guidance of what to do with them. I also post selections of wider reading using the ‘Materials’ setting on the classwork section and direct students to explore these in their own time. However, because they are used to exploring vocabulary and doing some form of generative task, they are normally ready to now design these independently, they have become habitual. In general, I’d avoid doing this at the start of the course or with younger students, to ensure that they have an idea of how to navigate this amount of material. 

So, can Google Classroom really reduce cognitive load? 

The ultimate aim of all of this is to ensure that students are learning new and difficult content. For this process to occur, according to neuroscience, they need to create complex and interconnected schema in the long-term memory. I have found that the way I use Classroom seems to aid this process. Although it is simple, the organisation of materials into topics which we as a class, or students as individuals, can dip back into, makes a quick review of prior content very easy. I have also found that Classroom helps create room for collaboration, both in the digital classroom and the real one. Students have completed wider reading or consolidation tasks more consistently and, as a result, can discuss more successfully with each other.

As always, I’d be interested to know about other teachers’ experiences with teaching advanced content to this age group and whether you’ve found similar benefits to the Google education tools.