At a Glance: Five Learning Sciences Principles for Instructional Design
- Cognitive Offloading
Extending the mind through external tools
Storing or processing information outside the brain - in tools, artifacts, or the environment - to free up internal resources for higher-order thinking.
Bridge to Practice Cognitive Offloading Cognitive Offloading infographic
- Productive Struggle
The learning power of desirable difficulty
Effortful sense-making just beyond students' current comfort zone. Struggle that is challenging but reachable - with enough prior knowledge and psychological safety - builds durable understanding.
Bridge to Practice Productive Struggle Productive Struggle infographic
- Metacognition
Thinking about your own thinking
The capacity to monitor, evaluate, and regulate one's own cognitive processes during learning - including planning strategies, tracking comprehension, and reflecting on what worked.
- Expectancy-Value
Motivation shaped by belief, worth, and trade-offs
Students are motivated to engage when they believe they can succeed (expectancy) AND believe the task is worth their effort (value). Perceived cost - time, effort, lost opportunities - can override both.
Bridge to Practice Expectancy-Value Expectancy-Value infographic
- Collaborative Reasoning
Building understanding through structured peer dialogue
A structured approach in which learners construct collective understanding through evidence-based argumentation - posing claims, offering evidence, challenging one another, and integrating views.
Bridge to Practice Collaborative Reasoning Collaborative Reasoning infographic