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Background: As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many teachers found themselves making a rapid and often challenging shift from in-person classroom teaching to teaching in an online environment. As teachers continue to learn about working in this new environment, research in cognitive and learning sciences, specifically findings from cognitive load theory and related areas, can provide meaningful strategies for teaching in this 'new normal'.Objectives: This paper describes 12 tips derived from contemporary research in educational psychology, focusing particularly on empirically supported strategies that teachers may apply in their online classroom to ensure that learning is optimized.Implications for Practice: These strategies are generalizable across age groups and learning areas, and are categorized into one of two themes: approaches to optimize the design of online learning materials, and instructional strategies to support student learning. A discussion follows, outlining how teachers may apply these strategies in different contexts, with a brief overview of emerging efforts that aim to bridge cognitive load theory and self-regulated learning research.

In 1956, Miller first reported on a capacity limitation in the amount of information the human brain can process, which was thought to be seven plus or minus two items. The system of memory used to process information for immediate use was coined “working memory” by Miller, Galanter, and Pribram in 1960. In 1968, Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed their multistore model of memory, which theorized that the memory system was separated into short-term memory, long-term memory, and the sensory register, the latter of which temporarily holds and forwards information from sensory inputs to short term-memory for processing. Baddeley and Hitch built upon the concept of multiple stores, leading to the development of the multicomponent model of working memory in 1974, which described two stores devoted to the processing of visuospatial and auditory information, both coordinated by a central executive system. Later, Cowan’s theorizing focused on attentional factors in the effortful and effortless activation and maintenance of information in working memory. In 1988, Cowan published his model—the scope and control of attention model. In contrast, since the early 2000s Engle has investigated working memory capacity through the lens of his individual differences model, which does not seek to quantify capacity in the same way as Miller or Cowan. Instead, this model describes working memory capacity as the interplay between primary memory (working memory), the control of attention, and secondary memory (long-term memory). This affords the opportunity to focus on individual differences in working memory capacity and extend theorizing beyond storage to the manipulation of complex information. These models and advancements have made significant contributions to understandings of learning and cognition, informing educational research and practice in particular. Emerging areas of inquiry include investigating use of gestures to support working memory processing, leveraging working memory measures as a means to target instructional strategies for individual learners, and working memory training. Given that working memory is still debated, and not yet fully understood, researchers continue to investigate its nature, its role in learning and development, and its implications for educational curricula, pedagogy, and practice.

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Open Educational Resources (OER) are defined by UNESCO as “any educational resource that may be freely accessed, copied, re-used, adapted and shared and which are available under an open license or are in the public domain for use without paying royalties/license fees.”(Study On International Collaboration on Open Educational Resources (OER), 2017). In particular, Open Textbooks (a form of OER that provides an alternative to traditional publisher textbooks) has been found to both reduce costs for students (Wiley et al., 2012) and have been found to be as effective or more effective than traditional textbooks (Robinson et al., 2014). In Australia, Open Textbooks continue to grow in use, being developed through grant projects through the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) and other groups, however as Stagg and Partridge (2019) note, awareness and understanding of OER and open textbooks is still quite low amongst academic staff in some institutions.Additionally, Lambert and Fadel recommend that more resources be earmarked for creation and use of Open Textbooks(Lambert & Fadel, 2022) In this presentation, an alternative to the widely used PressBooks platform is presented as a work in progress, one that that decentralizes the requirement for a single space to author and store Open Textbooks. PressBooks is an open-source platform for the creation of open textbooks based on the WordPress blogging system. For most organisations, it is primarily implemented as a hosted system, meaning institutions pay for PressBooks to store and maintain their books. Some universities in Australia are exploring PressBooks through pilots that tend to limit instructor access and creation of materials. Inspired by BCCampus’ Open Textbook Repository (https://open.bccampus.ca/) and a lack of accessible options for open learning materials creation, the presenter began to explore alternatives. theopenbook was developed as a Wordpress theme that could be added to any existing Wordpress site, either hosted on WordPress’s free site (www.wordpress.org) or on any university or privately-hosted Wordpress site. It provides a fast and modern user experience and navigation, while also providing easy block-based authorship, license selection on each book, design and accessibility choices, LMS / VLE embedding, upvoting and commenting, with ePub and PDF export currently in development. Like PressBooks, theopenbook allows for more plugins to be added for collaborative annotation, text-to-speech, automatic podcast generation, dead-link checking, H5P integration and even student-editable content, which can build connection between students while also demonstrating learning (Snowball & McKenna, 2016). Providing multiple means of access, in a mobile-friendly and flexible manner provides students with new ways to interact with learning technologies, learning materials, and each other. For authors, it provides fast and way to start creating with minimal professional learning requirements. theopenbook is currently being piloted at https://edtech.une.edu.au/books/, housing all learning materials for the University of New England’s Graduate Certificate in Digital Learning.