Subgoal Labeling

Subgoal labeling is the practice of giving a name to a group of steps within a step-by-step description of a process, to explain how that group of steps achieves a related subgoal, a concept used in cognitive science and educational psychology. The lower-level steps of a worked example are grouped into a meaningful unit and labeled, helping learners separate structural information from incidental detail; labeled subgoals can reduce cognitive load during problem solving because the learner has fewer possible next steps to consider, and subgoal-labeled worked examples may give learners a mental-model framework for the task. One study found that learners given subgoal labels used those labels when explaining how they solved a problem, suggesting the labels shaped how they mentally organized the information.