I think we might disagree on whether or not germane load is desirable, which makes the animation on slide 15 distracting (it attempts to define germane load in a desirable way).
My read of the research is that germane load is the load that the student expends to move ideas from the short term memory into the long term memory (i.e. anything that retrieves existing mental schemas and encodes the new material into them). Hence, germane load is good for learning. In one way, it is learning.
Under this interpretation, the multi-step condition of the experiment on slides 16-19 succeeds not because it decreases germane load in each step, but because it decreases the intrinsic load in each step. This free's students to reflect (germane load) on the pattern of the problem, speeding learning.
But I hold this strong opinion lightly: I think germane load is poorly defined, and the most disagreed on part of CLT.
I think we might disagree on whether or not germane load is desirable, which makes the animation on slide 15 distracting (it attempts to define germane load in a desirable way).
My read of the research is that germane load is the load that the student expends to move ideas from the short term memory into the long term memory (i.e. anything that retrieves existing mental schemas and encodes the new material into them). Hence, germane load is good for learning. In one way, it is learning.
Under this interpretation, the multi-step condition of the experiment on slides 16-19 succeeds not because it decreases germane load in each step, but because it decreases the intrinsic load in each step. This free's students to reflect (germane load) on the pattern of the problem, speeding learning.
But I hold this strong opinion lightly: I think germane load is poorly defined, and the most disagreed on part of CLT.