Students at home : Cognitive load associated with learning and using parametric tools

This presentation addresses architecture students’ cognitive load
associated with learning and using parametric tools. Cognitive load (CL) refers
to leveraged resources in working memory. In education we distinguish 3 types
of CL: extraneous, intrinsic and germane. The latter is viewed as beneficial as it
represents the effort put into learning through deep semantic processing (SP),
therefore, a long term cognitive investment. Similarly, in design, Bilda et al. have
seen benefits in higher loads situations leading to better designs. However, the
latter have shown SP to have a negative impact on design. Because of the
sanitary situation, students had to stay home and the class took place through
digital means. This was an opportunity to get closer to “real” design situation
as they weren’t supervised physically nor constrained digitally. We studied 5
collaborative design sessions covering 3 design assignments through a screen
and audio sharing platform. The assignments’ difficulty increased as students
progressed and were designed to focus on particular aspects of design. Sessions
were transcribed and encoded using Gero’s Function Behavior Structure ontology
(FBS), then analyzed through linkography. To discuss the results, we compared
them to a qualitative analysis of the transcripts and weekly retrospective reports.
We observed that during the design sessions, most of the cognitive effort is
focused towards light semantic processing. Having access to instant high level
information without supervision seems to arguably impact the learning benefits
as well as the creative output.