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Monitoring Online Training Behaviors: Awareness of Electronic Surveillance Hinders E‐Learners 1
Author(s) -
Thompson Lori Foster,
Sebastianelli Jeffrey D.,
Murray Nicholas P.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2009.00521.x
Subject(s) - psychology , distraction , social facilitation , affect (linguistics) , applied psychology , training (meteorology) , workload , social psychology , facilitation , salient , cognitive psychology , communication , computer science , physics , neuroscience , artificial intelligence , meteorology , operating system
Web‐based training programs commonly capture data reflecting e‐learners' activities, yet little is known about the effects of this practice. Social facilitation theory suggests that it may adversely affect people by heightening distraction and arousal. This experiment examined the issue by asking volunteers to complete a Web‐based training program designed to teach online search skills. Half of participants were told their training activities would be tracked; the others received no information about monitoring. Results supported the hypothesized effects on satisfaction, performance, and mental workload (measured via heart rate variability). Explicit awareness of monitoring appeared to tax e‐learners mentally during training, thereby hindering performance on a later skills test. Additionally, e‐learners reported less satisfaction with the training when monitoring was made salient.