Abstract:

The ASEAN countries will soon entering ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) integration which will open a great opportunity to mobilize the knowledge workers among its member countries. Thus, in 2018, all member counties will implement Mutual Recognition Arrangement (MRA) of Qualifications of Tourism Professionals which is the framework of competency standard that will promote the equality of tourism human resource and will facilitate the mobility of tourism professionals within the ASEAN region. Since there are over 2.7 million tourism professionals around Thailand [1], the online learning system were adopted as a tool to re-skill their knowledge workers.

One of the enabling factors is the mobile technology which is widely used as a learning media and influences the learning style of tourism knowledge workers. This trend provides opportunity for workers to share their knowledge and improve their learning performance [2]. Furthermore, the mobile technology also enables a rich-interactive environment which will leverage the learning performance of user may achieve [3]. However, the mobile technology also dramatically increases the information flow which might affect user’s limited cognitive capacities. Hence, the online learning system that lack of sufficient control over the content will diminish potential learning benefits.

In this study, the cognitive load theory and interactive media were employed to improve the knowledge workers' learning performance via mobile device. Two experiments were performed in order to find the optimal video lecture’s length and the effectiveness of interactive media. The first experiment was performed on 64 tourism knowledge workers which were divided into 4 groups randomly. Each group were loaded with different video’s length (i.e. 5, 7, 10 and 20 minutes) and different segmentation (i.e. 4, 3, 2, and 1 segment consequently). The second experiment was done on the same focus group by separating them into control and experiment group. The experiment group was assigned to use interactive media (2D learning game) right after the learning video. The control group was assigned to use non-interactive learning material. The knowledge retention and knowledge transfer tests were applied in both experiments.

The results shown that, by giving the same amount of learning time, the group of smaller video length performed significantly better than the others due to lower overloading information. Differences in knowledge retention and knowledge transfer tests were examined across different condition of video’s length for measuring learning performance. On the other hand, the groups which were equipped with interactive media achieved higher test scores than those in non-interactive groups. The evaluation method in performance test is same as first experiment. The result indicates that interactive group with smaller size of video length performed significantly better than the traditional online learning (long video and non-interactive) group.

References:
[1] The Labor Force Survey.(2011), National Statistical Office, Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, pp. 22.
[2] Goodman, P. S. & Darr, E. D. (1998). "Computer-Aided Systems and Communities: Mechanisms for Organizational Learning in Distributed Environments," MIS Quarterly, (22:4), pp. 417-440.
[3] Northrup, P. (2001). A framework for designing interactivity into Web-based instruction. Educational Technology 41 (2):pp. 31–39.

Keywords:

Cognitive load, Interactive Media, Knowledge worker, Mobile-learning.