Integration of cognitive load theory and concepts in Malaysia’s engineering education: A literature study

The field of engineering education has seen a sustained growth in recent years. However, the theoretical and empirical foundations that assist engineering students in grasping the learning content more effectively are still vague due to lack of research in this area. Engineering design involves complex cognitive activities because the learning of this domain requires the students to exert higher mental effort in the learning process. One of the keys of aiding students in facing up to this challenge is to help them build up knowledge and acquire skills related to novel or complex learning contents. In this vein, the Cognitive Load Theory which is rich in information can be used as a referential theory to generate more effective teaching methods and to provide guidelines for the design of lessons. This literature study examined previous empirical studies from the perspective of Cognitive Load Theory. The existing empirical findings were also compared in order to attain an approach that is relevant to the engineering domain. The findings suggest that example-based learning could be one of the approaches that is more effective to be applied in engineering lessons compared to problem-solving methods especially at the beginning of the learning phase. Two types of worked examples formats are proposed in this article. The first is ‘easy-to-difficult’ worked example; the second, ‘difficult-to-easy’.