Hot Off The Press: Neurodiversity and Cognitive Load in Online Learning

I’m happy to share my next installment of “Hot Off The Press”, a blog feature where I share emerging research, publications, standards (etc.) that are relevant to making awesome public health courses.

This month I’m highlighting a new article from the journal PLOS One called “Neurodiversity and Cognitive Load in Online Learning: A Focus Group Study” (Le Cunff, Giampietro, and Dommett, 2024).

This article quickly caught my eye for several reasons:

• A common conversation that I have with clients is around accessibility of their online courses. I emphasize that accessibility isn’t just about learners with permanent and/or visible disabilities. Therefore, we talk about instructional design for neurodivergent learners quite often!

• Last month on the blog, I highlighted the work of Dr. Emily Rothman and shared two online learning experiences that she developed with and for the autism community. Since autism falls under the umbrella term of “neurodiversity”, this article was a great follow up read.

• The article highlights why I love the work that I do and specifically why good instructional design is essential for e-learning:

The authors write, “Effective instructional design is of great importance in the context of online learning, where students have more agency over how they learn and where cognitive barriers, such as lack of attentional control and excessive mind wandering, can have an increased impact on self-regulated learning.”

Here are some of my key takeaways and reflections:

(1) Accessibility planning is important not just for implementing online learning, but also for studying online learning.

I really appreciated reading about how the authors designed the focus groups to provide opportunities for equitable participation. First, two modes of participation were offered (in-person on campus or online via video conference). Second, they used feedback from their Community Advisory Board and guidelines for conducting inclusive and accessible focus groups to incorporate accessibility features (e.g., ground rules and questions were shared both verbally and as a written document, participants were allowed to take breaks and use assistive software, etc.)

(2) While there was overlap in the sources and domains of cognitive overload, there were certain challenges that more strongly affected the learning experience for neurodivergent students. For example:

• Content Presentation: Neurodivergent students reported more difficulties in dealing with lectures that were presented too fast, too densely, without any visual aids, or enough breaks.

• Captions and Transcripts: Only neurodivergent students raised concerns about the quality of the captions and transcripts in online learning, expressing difficulties in listening to the lecture while keeping up with automated captions or finding mistakes in the transcripts.

• Curriculum: No neurotypical students mentioned curriculum as a source of cognitive load, while a number of neurodivergent students mentioned the challenges of lack of clarity regarding where to start in a long list of course materials and what parts of the curriculum were mandatory for exams.

(3) The same accessibility feature can benefit neurotypical and neurodivergent learners in different ways.

Being able to “pause and replay” instructional content was highlighted as a benefit by both groups of students. While neurotypical students mostly discussed the benefit of being able to go back and review specific concepts, neurodivergent students appreciated the ability to slow down or speed up the videos so they could match the learning to their preferred pace (pause and replay features also allow for breaks as needed).

I loved this example of the benefits of “pause and replay”, as I think it emphasizes why strategies like Universal Design for Learning work. When we design courses with access for everyone in mind, all of our learners benefit.

(4) Taking notes during learning experiences is not easy or effective for all learners.

As a life-long handwritten note-taker, this was really fascinating to me! The authors write that only neurotypical students mentioned taking notes as a strategy to manage cognitive load. In contrast, neurodivergent learners discussed the challenges of note-taking, which may result from competing sensory inputs and different ways of engaging with the content which can make it hard to focus.

I think this finding underscores the importance of having a detailed outline (and ideally a transcript) for videos or lectures so that students can follow along and highlight information without getting overwhelmed trying to write everything down in their notes.

I’d love to hear from you!

• Please share your thoughts on the article, my takeaways, and how you might apply the findings from these focus groups into your own online course design.

• Please share any new “Hot Off The Press” articles that you’re reading and why they’re important to your work.