Hairul Nizam Ismail

Unconscious learning processes: mental integration of verbal and pictorial instructional materials

This review aims to provide an insight into human learning processes by examining the role of cognitive and emotional unconscious processing in mentally integrating visual and verbal instructional materials. Reviewed literature shows that conscious mental integration does not happen all the time, nor does it necessarily result in optimal learning. Students of all ages and levels of experience cannot always have conscious awareness, control, and the intention to learn or promptly and continually organize perceptual, cognitive, and emotional processes of learning. This review suggests considering the role of unconscious learning processes to enhance the understanding of how students form or activate mental associations between verbal and pictorial information. The understanding would assist in presenting students with spatially-integrated verbal and pictorial instructional materials as a way of facilitating mental integration and improving teaching and learning performance.

Greater Cognitive Effort for Better Learning: Tailoring an Instructional Design for Learners with Different Levels of Knowledge and Motivation

The capacity limitation of working memory is a widely recognised determinant of human learning. A cognitive load exceeding the capacity hampers learning. Cognitive load can be controlled by tailoring an instructional design to levels of learner prior knowledge. However, such as design does not necessarily motivate to use the available capacity for better learning. The present review examines literatures on the effects of instructional design, motivation, emotional state, and expertise level on cognitive load and cognitive effort, which ultimately affect working memory performance and learning. This examination suggests further studies on the effects of motivation and negative emotional states on the use of working memory. Prospective findings would help better explain and predict individual differences in the use of working memory for cognitive learning and task performance.

Empowering students’ minds through a cognitive load theory-based lecture model: A metacognitive approach

ABSTRACT Lecturing is widely considered to be a passive, teacher-centred teaching method that fails to foster learning, yet it remains the most feasible method of teaching among higher institutions. Some modern lectures, aligned with recommendations from published guidelines on effective lecturing, are less didactic and more interactive than others, but little is known about converting the classical knowledge-transfer process of lecturing to actual learning. We introduce a cognitive load theory-based lecture guideline that adopts various types of empirically proven strategies to manage learners’ mental loads during lectures. We conducted a randomised controlled trial to evaluate its effectiveness by determining the between-group difference in cognitive load level, self-perceived learning, knowledge acquisition and knowledge retention. This study discusses the practical application of the guideline and several examples of the principles.

Describing Dialogic Teaching and Learning in A Malaysian Higher Learning Institution Setting: A Discussion of Its Observational Findings

Education has always been fundamental in an individual’s life and in a nation’s survival, at large. Synonymous to the process of teaching and learning, it is always expected to meet the demands of many parties including the community, the educational institution itself and the country. As for a higher learning milieu, the teaching and learning process is enlightened with various methodologies in lesson delivery. Among all, dialogic teaching and learning is found to be an appropriate pedagogical method which offers a great deal of benefits. An educator was identified to practise such a method and it was the objective of the research to uncover the practice in a Malaysian tertiary education context. Employing a qualitative approach, the research implicated an educator and 41 learners who were directly involved in the dialogic teaching and learning. Through a classroom observation technique, significant episodes were recorded and narrated. This paper aims at presenting the observational findings, thus, suggesting a number of pedagogical implications.