Cognitive load theory is fairly straightforward. People are able to handle 7±2 items in their working (short-term) memory at any one time. This means reliably

Cognitive load theory is fairly straightforward. People are able to handle 7±2 items in their working (short-term) memory at any one time. This means reliably 5 items. Subtract one for standard normal distractors. Thus students should not be expected to have to juggle more than 4 items at any one time. The problem here is that what an item is for a student is different than what an item is for an instructor. This is due to "chunking" (technical term from psychology). For the instructor, discovering what an item is especially difficult, as they may not be aware of what they had to learn to know what they now know. Personally I'm all for minimal guidance, but it has to be closely aligned to learning outcomes, and the instructor needs to understand what an item means for the student, if they are to have a hope of introducing less than four things at a time. CLT is a solid theory with an extremely good basis. However understanding how to apply it is hard given the knowledge difference between student and instructor.