Impacts of Emergency Online Instruction on Engineering Students' Perceived Cognitive Load during Learning Assessments

ABSTRACT

CONTEXT A primarily undergraduate military college shifted from face-to-face instruction to emergency online instruction in Spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are examining student experiences with the shift using Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), which asserts that learning is hindered when cognitive load overwhelms finite working memory capacity. At the onset of the pandemic, we hypothesized that the need to manage learning in new and changing modalities may increase students' cognitive load and development. PURPOSE OR GOAL We seek to triangulate a previous finding that middle-years students experienced more cognitive load demands than either freshmen or seniors during the Spring 2020 semester. In this study, we examine cognitive load experienced by students in sophomore-, junior-, and senior-level civil engineering courses when engaging in various types of summative assessments. Our goal was to understand how academic course level and assessment type (closed-ended vs. open-ended) may have impacted cognitive load among students. APPROACH OR METHODOLOGY/METHODS We are engaged in a longitudinal mixed-methods study to explore the impacts of changing modalities on cognitive load and student development during the pandemic. For this study, we measured cognitive load experienced during five assessments administered across civil engineering courses of different academic levels using the NASA Task Load Index (TLX). The TLX is a rigorously-developed instrument that quantifies workload (a surrogate for cognitive load) across six dimensions mental demand, physical demand, temporal demand, performance, effort, and frustration. We used non-parametric analysis to identify differences in cognitive workload by course level and assessment type. We supplemented interpretation of findings through analysis of open-ended questions and focus group transcripts. ACTUAL OR ANTICIPATED OUTCOMES Sophomores and juniors experienced summative assessments differently than seniors, a finding that is consistent with our previous publications suggesting that modality changes may have disproportionately impacted middle-years students. Analysis of TLX data showed that sophomores and juniors reported highest time-demand and frustration, respectively, during closed-ended assessments. Open-ended assessments elicited significant frustration among juniors, a trend that was not observed for seniors. Qualitatively, both sophomores and juniors discussed workload-associated aspects of the modality shift more than seniors. CONCLUSIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS/SUMMARY We seek to further understand the unique experiences of middle-years students as a means for developing recommendations for managing cognitive load during online engineering courses - whether planned or unplanned. Copyright © Mary K. Watson, Elise Barrella, Kevin Skenes, Benjamin Kicklighter and Aidan Puzzio, 2021.