The spike: A sudden overload—when content demands more than the brain can hold in the moment, and processing grinds to a halt. When load spikes too high, learning stops. That’s why smart design spaces things out, cuts the clutter, and makes room for real thinking.

Let’s take a closer look at each type.

1. Intrinsic Load: The inherent difficulty of the material

This is the natural mental effort required by the material itself—regardless of how you teach it. Learning to subtract integers? That’s light. Learning to budget on a fixed income with compound interest and inflation? That’s heavier.

It’s not your fault. It’s just hard.

Example on Edovo:
Explaining the difference between a checking and savings account is low intrinsic load. Explaining how interest accrues over time using APR calculations? That’s high intrinsic load—and your Learner might need a few extra visual steps to process it.

2. Extraneous load: the stuff that gets in the way

This is the bad kind of mental effort—the kind that makes learning harder without adding value. Poor instructions. Confusing layouts. Text walls. Missing headers. That weird stock image of a piggy bank with sunglasses? It all adds up.
If your content feels like it’s working against the Learner, this is why.

Example on Edovo:
A slide with five dense paragraphs, a blurry chart, and no visual hierarchy? That’s peak extraneous load. Learners shouldn’t have to decode your design to get to your message.

3. Germane Load: The mental work that builds understanding
   
   

This is the useful strain—the productive effort your brain puts in to actually learn something. It’s when the Learner connects new information to old knowledge, builds a schema, or reflects meaningfully. It’s not easy, but it’s where the growth happens.

Example on Edovo:
Asking the Learner to compare two budget plans they just explored—and choose which one they’d recommend for someone earning minimum wage—that’s germane load. It’s intentional. It’s relevant. It’s how long-term learning sticks (and travels outside the tablet).

Got it, but what about the spike part?

Cognitive load on its own isn’t the enemy. In fact, some load is necessary—it's what activates real learning. But spikes? Spikes are sudden surges in mental effort that exceed what the Learner can reasonably manage. They don’t build understanding. They break it.

Spikes happen when intrinsic load (how hard the material is) and extraneous load (how badly it’s delivered) pile up in the same moment. The brain gets overwhelmed. The Learner shuts down—sometimes without even realizing why.

Now layer this onto the reality of many incarcerated adults:

• Stress from the environment (noise, interruption, vigilance)
  
  

• Shame from prior learning experiences (school trauma, labeling, dropout)
  
  

• Unresolved trauma that already drains mental bandwidth
  
  

These learners are operating with reduced working memory capacity to begin with. So a cognitive load spike that might feel like “just a little friction” for a college student can feel like an avalanche in correctional settings.

In simple terms: a load spike doesn’t mean a learner isn’t trying. It means the system gave out before they did.

“I was following… and now I’m not.”

• Skimming and skipping
  
  

• Logging off early
  
  

• Incomplete responses
  
  

• Avoidance of anything requiring reflection

• Completion rates drop mid-module
  
  

• Reflection prompts are skipped or answered off-topic
  
  

• Learners choose the path of least resistance—short videos, multiple-choice, anything “easier”
  
  

For incarcerated adults learning independently on Edovo, the causes are everywhere:

• Too many new concepts introduced too quickly
  
  

• Visually or linguistically dense screens
  
  

• Prompts that require synthesis before comprehension
  
  

• No space to pause or breathe between ideas
  
  

That’s not laziness. That’s a system-level cue to reduce load and increase clarity.

What looks like disengagement is often self-protection. The brain says: "I’m out."

What a cognitive load spike looks like on Edovo

Scenario: You’re designing a self-paced course on financial literacy for incarcerated adults.

Here’s what the learner sees by page 4:

• A short paragraph defining compound interest
  
  

• A second paragraph with a sample calculation
  
  

• A chart comparing interest rates from different banks
  
  

• A reflection prompt: “How does compound interest affect your savings goals?”
  
  

• No visuals. No recap. No chunking.
  
  

What just happened?

• Intrinsic load: Compound interest is conceptually hard—especially if you’ve never had a bank account.
  
  

• Extraneous load: You just stacked text, math, a chart, and a writing prompt into one cognitive gulp.
  
  

• Result: Brain freeze. The learner backs out, skips ahead, or disengages completely.
  
  

Fix it by:

• Breaking that screen into three: one for definition, one for calculation, one for comparison
  
  

• Using simple visuals (e.g., interest growth as a bar chart or time-based flow)
  
  

• Replacing the open-ended reflection with a scaffolded choice: “Which savings option grows faster over time?”
  
  

Is your lesson spiking too soon? A designer’s checklist

Use this all-in-one table to identify and fix overload triggers before your content reaches a learner. Each row helps you rethink structure, visuals, pacing, and tone—so your lessons build confidence, not confusion.

This isn’t watering things down—it’s making understanding possible.

Overload drowns learning. Clarity lets it breathe.

 

A moment of reflection (for you, not them)

Look at a course you've built on Edovo. Find a lesson with high drop-off or confusion.

Ask yourself:

• Am I stacking ideas too fast?
  
  

• Is this slide doing too much at once?
  
  

• Could I break this into two or three lighter-touch screens?
  
  

• Would this feel doable if I were anxious, distracted, or learning alone?
  
  

If not—simplify. Stretch it. Resequence it. You're not just building lessons; you're building confidence.

What success looks like

When you manage load well:

• Learners stay with the material longer
  
  

• Their responses show insight, not overwhelm
  
  

• Confidence builds screen by screen
  
  

• You reduce frustration, dropout, and avoidance
  
  

This is how you make space for real growth—even in a system that starts with limitations.

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TL;DR: Ease up to level up

• Cognitive load = the mental work learners must juggle
  
  

• Spikes happen when content overwhelms memory, especially under stress
  
  

• Incarcerated adults using Edovo are especially vulnerable to overload
  
  

• Manage pace, chunk content, and space out complexity
  
  

• The goal isn’t simplicity—it’s clarity
  

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References

Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12(2), 257–285. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog1202_4 

Sweller, J., van Merriënboer, J. J. G., & Paas, F. G. W. C. (1998). Cognitive architecture and instructional design. Educational Psychology Review, 10(3), 251–296. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022193728205 

University of Queensland. (n.d.). Cognitive load strategy – Cognitive learning design. https://itali.uq.edu.au/files/8036/cognitive_load_strategy.pdf 

Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia learning (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Knowles, M. S., Holton, E. F., & Swanson, R. A. (2015). The adult learner: The definitive classic in adult education and human resource development (8th ed.). Routledge. 

SAMHSA. (2014). SAMHSA’s concept of trauma and guidance for a trauma-informed approach. https://ncsacw.acf.hhs.gov/userfiles/files/SAMHSA_Trauma.pdf