Managing one's own cognitive load when evidence of split attention is present

There is an increasing expectation in tertiary education that students take control of their own learning, experience independence and manage their own cognition. This research sought to investigate techniques for university students to manage their own cognitive load. This paper presents two experiments conducted with postgraduate university students enrolled in an educational psychology subject in an Australian university. A total of 86 students participated in Experiment 1 and 85 in Experiment 2. The results of both experiments show that it is possible to instruct students on how to self-manage split attention. Furthermore, the findings from Experiment 2 show that students can transfer skills of split-attention management when provided with new instructional materials. The implications for this unique direction of cognitive load theory research are discussed.