Over the last 25 years, cognitive load theory has become one of the world's leading theories of instructional design. It is heavily researched by many educational and psychological researchers and is familiar to most practicing instructional designers, especially designers using computer and related technologies.

The theory can be divided into two aspects that closely inter-relate and influence each other: human cognitive architecture and the instructional designs and prescriptions that flow from that architecture. The cognitive architecture is based on biological evolution....