Potential Negative Effects of Mobile Learning on Students' Learning Achievement and Cognitive Load—A Format Assessment Perspective

TLDR

Mobile learning has expanded with advances in mobile and wireless technologies, enabling anytime, anywhere access to online resources, yet its combination of real‑world contexts and digital resources and the effectiveness of existing e‑learning strategies in such mobile settings remain uncertain. The study aimed to investigate the potential negative effects of mobile learning by examining students’ cognitive load and learning achievement. An in‑field activity was conducted in an elementary school indigenous culture course using a formative assessment‑based learning strategy to collect data. The results showed that students using existing online learning strategies performed poorly or even worse than expected, likely due to heavy cognitive load from improper design, offering guidance for future mobile learning activity design.

Abstract

Owing to the advancement of mobile and wireless communication technologies, an increasing number of mobile learning studies have been conducted in recent years. In a mobile learning environment, students are able to learn indoors and outdoors with access to online resources at any time. However, whether or not new learning scenarios that combine both real-world contexts and digital-world resources are beneficial to the students has been questioned. Moreover, it is also interesting to probe whether the existing e-learning strategies are effective when situated in those mobile learning scenarios. In this study, an in-field activity on an indigenous culture course of an elementary school with a formative assessment-based learning strategy was conducted to investigate the possible negative effects of mobile learning by analyzing the students’ cognitive load and learning achievement. It is interesting to find that, without proper treatment, the performance of students using those existing online learning strategies, known to be “effective,” might be disappointing or may even negatively affect the students’ learning achievements. Furthermore, the negative effects could be due to the heavy cognitive load caused by an improper learning design. Such findings offer good references for those who intend to design and conduct mobile learning activities.