Working memory holds a small number of items for a short time, and instruction that exceeds it produces no learning regardless of how well the material is organised. This much is uncontroversial. The applications drawn from it are more contested, because the load a task imposes is not a property of the task alone: material that overwhelms a novice is handled effortlessly by someone who has stored the relevant patterns, and the same presentation can therefore be optimal for one learner and counterproductive for another. Worked examples help beginners and slow experts, an effect robust enough to have acquired a name. Designing instruction by load alone, without reference to who is being taught, is the error the framework itself predicts.