Designing With Cognitive Load in Mind
How to Achieve High-Quality Online Courses (Part 2)
Designing challenge without overwhelm
High-quality online courses are not defined by how much content they contain, but by how effectively that content is structured for learning.
In practice, we often see online modules that are academically sound but difficult for students to engage with. Concepts are introduced too quickly, multiple ideas compete for attention, and learners are left to navigate complexity without sufficient support. The issue is rarely the level of challenge itself. More often, it is how that challenge is designed.
At Learning Design Solutions, we approach this as a design problem rather than a learner deficit. Central to that approach is careful attention to cognitive load — the mental effort required to process new information — and how it is managed across an online course.
Cognitive Load as a Quality Issue
Cognitive Load Theory highlights a simple but powerful constraint: learners have limited working memory. When instructional design exceeds that capacity, learning is impaired, regardless of motivation or ability.
Online learning environments amplify this risk. Students are required to manage their own attention, pacing, and navigation, often without the immediate scaffolding of a live teaching context. Long pages of text, poorly sequenced concepts, or competing multimedia elements can quickly overwhelm learners.
From a quality perspective, cognitive overload is a signal that design decisions have not sufficiently accounted for how learning unfolds over time.
Designing for Real Learning Contexts
Designing with cognitive load in mind is also about understanding the context in which online learning actually takes place.
Many learners engaging with online courses are studying alongside work, caring responsibilities, and other personal commitments. Learning often happens in short, fragmented periods rather than long, uninterrupted blocks of time. Attention is limited, and the cognitive effort available for study varies from day to day.
This reality has a direct impact on design quality. When courses assume sustained focus, extensive reading in a single sitting, or complex navigation across multiple resources, they place unnecessary cognitive demands on learners before learning even begins.
By managing cognitive load deliberately, we are not reducing academic challenge. We are respecting learners’ time and attention and ensuring that the effort they invest is focused on learning rather than on deciphering structure, expectations, or interfaces.
High-quality online design acknowledges that clarity, sequencing, and purposeful structure are not just pedagogic choices — they are essential supports for learners studying in real-world conditions.
Designing for “Just Enough” Challenge
Designing with cognitive load in mind does not mean making learning easy. High-quality courses should be intellectually demanding, particularly at postgraduate level. The challenge lies in calibrating that demand so that it stretches learners without overwhelming them.
This aligns closely with the idea of the zone of proximal development — designing learning that sits just beyond what learners can do independently, but within reach when appropriate support is provided. In practice, this means thinking carefully about when complexity is introduced, how support is structured, and when that support is gradually withdrawn.
Our aim is not to minimise cognitive load, but to manage it deliberately, ensuring that mental effort is directed towards learning rather than navigating poorly structured content.
From Outcomes to Learning Journey
As discussed in Start With Outcomes: How Clear Intent Drives Quality (Part 1 of this series), clearly articulated learning outcomes provide the foundation for high-quality online course design.
Those outcomes also play a crucial role in managing cognitive load. When outcomes are explicit, they help designers and academics decide what learners need to focus on at a particular point in the course, which concepts are foundational, and what level of depth is appropriate at each stage.
In our current programme redevelopment work, this outcomes-led approach allows us to design learning journeys that build progressively, rather than front-loading complexity.
How We Manage Cognitive Load in Practice
Managing cognitive load is embedded in how we plan, storyboard, and build online courses at Learning Design Solutions.
Structuring and chunking learning
Content is organised into clearly defined sections, each aligned to weekly learning outcomes. Long explanations are broken into manageable conceptual units that can be revisited and built upon, making it easier for learners to orient themselves and sustain focus.
Sequencing before complexity
We prioritise conceptual clarity before asking learners to analyse, evaluate, or apply ideas in depth. This sequencing supports confidence and reduces unnecessary cognitive strain while maintaining academic rigour.
Scaffolding learning over time
Support is designed into the course structure and gradually reduced as learners develop competence. Early activities may be more guided or modelled, with later tasks becoming increasingly open-ended. This supports challenge without leaving learners unsupported.
Designing for productive effort
We design activities that require learners to think, apply, and reflect. The aim is productive challenge — effort that strengthens learning — rather than frustration caused by unclear expectations or poorly structured tasks.
The Role of AI in Supporting Cognitive Clarity
AI plays a supporting role in this process, helping us work more efficiently without compromising design judgement.
In practice, we use AI to analyse outcome mappings, identify where content density may be too high, draft material that can then be refined or reduced, and test whether learning journeys progress logically across weeks.
Because AI works from design artefacts we have already created — outcomes, plans, and storyboards — it reinforces alignment rather than introducing additional complexity. Used well, it helps surface potential cognitive load issues earlier in the design process.
Cognitive Load as an Indicator of Quality
One of the most reliable indicators of a high-quality online course is how it feels to learn from it.
Do learners know where to focus their attention?
Does challenge increase gradually and purposefully?
Are activities clearly connected to prior learning and future assessment?
When cognitive load is well managed, learners experience intellectual challenge without confusion. That balance is the result of intentional design.
What Comes Next
In the next post in this series, we’ll explore how activity-based learning design builds on this foundation — and why high-quality online learning depends on giving students opportunities to actively apply what they are learning.
High-quality online courses are not built by adding more content.
They are built by designing learning that works.
Want to Talk About Quality in Your Courses?
If you are reviewing existing online modules or planning new programmes and want to strengthen quality through better learning design, we’d be happy to talk.
References
Bjork, R. A., & Bjork, E. L. (2011). Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way. Psychology and the Real World.
Mayer, R. E. (2020). Multimedia Learning (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Sweller, J., Ayres, P., & Kalyuga, S. (2011). Cognitive Load Theory. Springer.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society. Harvard University Press.