When Knowing More Means Knowing Less: Understanding the Impact of Computer Experience on e Learning and e Learning Outcomes", Electronic

Abstract: Students often report feeling more overloaded in courses that use e-learning environments compared to traditional face-to-face courses that do not use such environments. Discussions here consider online design and organizational factors that might contribute to students ’ reports of information overload. It was predicted that certain online factors might contribute to stimulus overload and possibly students ’ perceived overload, rather than information overload per se. User characteristics and a range of design and organizational factors that might contribute to perceived overload are discussed and hypotheses of how such factors might affect learning outcomes are also discussed. An experiment was conducted to test predictions that (i) students ’ past online experience, (ii) the organization and relevance of online information, and (iii) the level of task difficulty affect (i) learning outcomes, (ii) students ’ perceptions of information overload, and (iii) students ’ perceptions of having enough time to complete experimental tasks. A total of 187 participants were tested in four experimental conditions that manipulated the organization and relevance of online material that students had to learn (ie, (i) a stimulus-low environment, where the material to be learned was presented as scrolling text, with no other stimuli present; (ii) a familiar environment, where the material to be learned was set within the borders of a familiar course Web site; (iii) a stimulus-rich or stimulus-noisy environment, where the material to be learned was set within the borders of an Amazon.com Web page (a Web site where you can search for, and buy books, videos and other products online); (iv) a PDF file environment, wher