Cognitive offloading is something people do naturally and instinctively, on a daily basis or regular recurrence, often without realising they are doing so. When an individual is required to retain and later recall information, they tend to make a record of this, to refer to. This is because of the awareness of the likelihood of forgetting due to the limitations of working memory. At its most basic, working memory is limited in terms of capacity and duration – how much information can be held and for how long. Working memory capacity does vary amongst individuals but it is difficult to measure so it is more appropriate for teachers to plan and deliver lessons based on the principle that working memory is limited.
A study published by Alexandra B. Morrison and Lauren L. Richmond (2020) defined cognitive offloading in the abstract as the following:
Cognitive offloading refers to the act of reducing the mental processing requirements of a task through physical actions like writing down information or storing information on a cell phone or computer. Offloading can lead to improved performance on ongoing tasks with high cognitive demand, such as tasks where multiple pieces of information must be simultaneously maintained.
The authors added:
Offloading can help overcome the well-established capacity limits of cognitive processes such as working memory.
If for example, you meet someone new and plan to exchange telephone contact details there is little sense in trying to commit the telephone number to memory as this will take considerable time and effort, with a risk of forgetting the number or making a mistake. Instead, it is much easier to cognitively offload this information by storing a telephone number in the contacts folder in a phone. When shopping, people tend to create a list to remind themselves of the products they need to purchase, again to overcome the issue of forgetting. Cognitive offloading can occur in several ways in day-to-day life but how can it be used and applied in the classroom to support learners? Below are some simple strategies that enable learners to cognitively offload, and therefore reduce the load and strain on their limited working memory.
Show Me Boards
Show Me Boards (also known as Mini White Boards or Dry Erase Boards) are a very versatile classroom resource. There are different ways students can use the boards in a lesson to cognitively offload and revisit information. Students can write down their initial response to questions (this technique can be used with ‘cold calling’) and if they are asked to share their answer with a partner, for example with Think-Pair-Share, or the whole class they can refer back to their original written response on their board. Students can use their boards to write down instructions or make a note of valuable information, rather than attempting to hold it in their working memory.
Verbal Feedback
There are many benefits to verbal feedback – it can happen live in a lesson to move learning forward; support students and it encourages feedback to include dialogue between the teacher and learner. However, there is a risk that once the teacher has provided the verbal feedback to students (to individuals, pairs, groups, or the whole class) that the feedback is forgotten and therefore can be wasted.
To avoid this, there are two key techniques students can implement. The first is for the student to write down the verbal feedback (in the margin or on a post-it note) and this allows the teacher to check if the learner has understood the feedback when they summarise it in their own words. The student then has a record to refer to if they do forget the feedback. Another technique (and something all students should be doing) is to act on the feedback as soon as possible. By acting on the feedback the learner is doing something with the feedback, therefore it is being processed in working memory, and they are actively making progress and improvements.
You and your students are probably already using techniques inside and outside of the classroom to cognitively offload new information. It can be helpful to explain to students why it is a useful technique and how they can benefit from doing so.
Find out more about memory and learning by completing the Science of Learning Programme as part of the Great Teaching Toolkit.
You can also download the free eBook Understanding Memory and Learning from the Evidence Based Education resource library.
References:
Morrison AB, Richmond LL. Offloading items from memory: individual differences in cognitive offloading in a short-term memory task. Cogn Res Princ Implic. 2020 Jan 3;5(1):1. doi: 10.1186/s41235-019-0201-4. PMID: 31900685; PMCID: PMC6942100.
