CAFÉ Toolkit | CAFÉ Toolkit

Welcome to the CAFÉ.

The Cognitive Assistance Factor Evaluation (CAFE) Toolkit contains tools to help educators design or re-design their courses or learning materials using Cognitive Load Theory and what we know about human cognitive architecture.

The primary purpose of this site is to provide user-friendly feedback on how to improve materials - or indeed an entire course - that may be "troublesome". Troublesome materials and courses are those where many students deliver poor performance. In these courses, students are often relatively novice or the content is relatively difficult, or both. In these situations students can still learn the content but there needs to be a focus on avoiding cognitive overload in students.

To interact with this site (comment on content, for example) you will need to register. Registration is free!
If you have already registered, login before trying to post comments.

Evaluate a course

Use CLT to assess your course* as a whole - structure, sequencing and choice of materials. The course tool will also provide feedback on aspects of your course that may be improved.
* a unit of study usually with an exam at the end.

CAFÉ International

Our latest projects involve exploring the additional cognitive load that non-English-speaking background students experience when studying in English as their language of instruction. This is arguably more extensive in technical areas that use large numbers of English-based keywords or jargon. Our on-going research and results are shown in this area of the site.

Evaluate a student resource

Use the instructional design effects derived from CLT to evaluate the extent to which a particular student resource follows these instructional design principles. Feedback and suggestions are given.

Plan case study measures

New tool that helps educators to plan the measures that they will use to determine the effectiveness of their cognitive load theory interventions. This decision tool will ask questions and suggest measures to help to plan a case study.

About Cognitive Load Theory

An information library about Cognitive Load Theory, including the foundational theory, as well as information about each of the effects and implications for instructional design.

Case Studies

This is an ongoing section of the site, where outlines of case studies of successful applications of Cognitive Load Theory are placed. Each case study links to relevant papers (if they have been published) and we welcome comments about these case studies, or offers to replicate these in your institution.