The interplay between cognitive task complexity and user interaction in mobile collaborative training

Mobile collaborative training is increasingly crucial in today's mobile world, in that much complicated collaborative professional work is being conducted in the field and globally. Nevertheless, this field is lacking in holistic empirical studies to effectively understand this important phenomenon and its challenges. Accordingly, grounded upon cognitive load theory and Bloom's taxonomy, we designed and conducted a set of mobile collaborative training field experiments with 364 participants to examine the impact of the various complexities of cognitive tasks on user performance and perceptions, using a non-interactive vs. interactive mobile training app in both individual and group settings. The study findings provide useful insights into the interplay between cognitive task complexity and user interactions with both peers and technologies in a mobile collaborative training. We found that at the lowest level of cognitive complexity, user performance and perceptions of mobile training achieved the desirable improved results between non-interactive and interactive mobile app use. At the middle level of complexity, no significant differences were found. Surprisingly, at the highest level of complexity, the results indicate that cognitive task complexity and user interactions with both peers and technology significantly decreased user performance and user perceptions of mobile training. This study also offers practical implications whereby educators and training practitioners need to clearly balance the interface design of mobile training systems and different complexity levels of cognitive tasks in various training domains, in order to to achieve the desired training outcomes.