The effect of system usability and multitasking activities in distance learning

In this paper we describe a study in which we assessed the effects of the usability of a teaching system designed for distance learning in the context of different types of multitasking activities. The learning performance of six groups of students has been compared after their individual interaction with a system that was either usable or not, and in conditions of simple learning, sequential multitasking or concurrent multitasking. Results show that learning processes are negatively affected by the use of a system that is difficult to use. In addition, learning in multitasking conditions appears to be a difficult task only when students have to acquire new information while doing something else at the same time (concurrent multitasking). The usability levels of the system do not seem to interact with the multitasking modality of learning. © 2011 ACM.