Scavenger+Hunt+3

=__Cognitive Load Theory__=

For this Scavenger Hunt I chose to discuss the cognitive load theory. There are multiple features in this theory that catch my interest, however, the two features I chose to focus on are redundancy and the split attention principle. Based on my experiences in college, I learned through my many presentations that my audience responded better and seemed to learn more when my presentations contained visual aids that went along with what I was telling them. The key to a good presentation is to know how much information to present at a given time, because if too much information is presented to the learners at one time or one risks overwhelming their audience and the audience is unable to learn anything. The main reason that I ended up choosing these two principles because of the way I learn new information. While I can learn from lectures, I learn best from written instructions along with appropriate visual aids. The problem with many presentations that I see today is students try to cram so much information into their presentations that they do not always realize what they are putting in. Often, they end up putting in information that has been said more than once or using the same example on multiple occasions. This problem is also becoming increasingly common in websites, as many site overwhelm visitors with so many images that it is hard to keep ones focus. In any project or presentation, it is important to limit yourself and to try not to put too much in your work or you risk repeating yourself in your presentation in the form or written text or visual aids, resulting in redundancy. It is also important to limit the number of visual aids because while they can catch the viewer's attention, they also risk distracting the viewers from the message the presentation is trying to get across. At times like this, I am reminded of a famous quote by Mark Twain, "Sorry about the length of this letter, if I had more time I would have made it shorter."



[] This site is a prime example of redundancy. This website tries to throw as much content as it can at the user, which can easily overwhelm any visitor to the site. This is a clear example of redundancy since the entire site sends the viewer into a cognitive overload. As one looks at the site, it becomes clear that several of the images are used on multiple occasions on the page for no reason other than having images on the page. The site also has the same hyperlinks posted three times, THREE TIMES! It was as if the sites creators did not even look back to see what they had already posted on the site.

[] Would you believe that this was created as a charity site? This site contains so many advertisements that it difficult to figure out what the site's purpose is or even where to go to locate any information on the site. This site was poorly designed and it relates greatly to cognitive load and, more importantly, the split-attention effect. Most of the images and animation seem to be placed at random, and what few parts of the site that try to be informative are dwarfed by the massive number of advertisements and "click here" boxes. While I applaud any site that is trying to help a country in need, the web designers seemed to put little to no thought in finding a nice, genuine, request for donations. Instead, they created a site where the message is lost on the visitors by the overwhelming large number of images on the site.