Cognitive Load and Learning Styles of Mobile Workers: Future directions

Abstract

The wide use of mobile information and communication technologies in working practices offers new opportunities to workers to absorb and process information in different ways, different places and consequently to support their learning anytime anywhere. However, owing to this mobilization, mobile devices contribute to work intensification and at the end lead to the development of information overload problems. Recent mobility literature misses a theoretical and empirical explanation of the individual and organizational impact of this emerging concept, we thus propose in the current research to explain the relationship between worker's mobility and the learning styles through enhancing the information load. The results of semi-structured interviews with Tunisian mobile workers reveal that the use of mobiles ICT can generates paradoxical styles of learning. This is essentially due to individual cognitive capacity, the nature (urgent or ordinary), the moment (beginning or end of day) and solicitations. Researches on learning styles in the Information System area should be further developed, especially with regard to the analysis of overload of mobile workers. Cognitive issues and the awareness of the way mobile workers assimilate and use information can offer new individual and organizational opportunities to face mobility challenges. It will also provide us with a useful framework for future researches.