Increased Student Mental Burden Due To E-Learning And How To Overcome It

Photo illustration (Frank Romero / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Studying at home using the e-learning method can actually increase the mental burden for students in Indonesia. So how do you reduce this mental burden?

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, almost all Indonesian students have been studying at home since mid-March. Therefore, all teaching and learning activities are carried out online. One of them is implementing e-learning.

Unfortunately, the latest research made by lecturer at the Faculty of Industrial Engineering, Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) Ari Widyanti and his team revealed that learning using e-learning can increase the mental load of students. The research entitled e-Learning and Perceived Learning Workload among Students in an Indonesian University was published by the international journal Knowledge Management & E-Learning.

Ari, in his writings quoted by ITB, explained that e-learning is an interactive online learning system that has been implemented by higher education. In its application, e-learning focuses more on self-learning methods. Through e-learning, students usually only access material or upload assignments and discuss with lecturers who teach certain courses.

According to Ari, this learning system has a weakness, namely reducing the socialization process between individuals due to reduced face-to-face communication processes. This is the biggest factor why e-learning adds to the mental load of students.

Mental load is defined as a person's cognitive ability to face a certain work load. Meanwhile, when someone feels that their workload exceeds their cognitive capacity, automatically the mental load they experience will be high.

To measure the mental load of students, Ari uses three parameters with three different instruments. First, the level of readiness, then sleepiness, and finally calculating the perception of subjective mental load. This parameter is then compared between e-learning learning and face-to-face learning in class.

The level of readiness parameter is used to measure how high a student's mental load is when operating technology to access e-learning. In this parameter, Ari revealed that the result was no difference in the level of readiness of the respondents, both learning e-learning and in class. This is because students are generally already proficient in using technology for e-learning.

Then, the second parameter is the level of sleepiness. From the results of this research, it shows that the e-learning learning process invites more sleep than in the classroom. And the end result is that the mental load of students is higher when learning e-learning than in class.

Ari Widiyanti explained that the high mental load could be due to the absence of lecturers in class. With the presence of lecturers, students can immediately know which material is the most important to be reviewed. Meanwhile, when learning with e-learning, students must independently determine which material needs to be studied and which does not. This is what adds to their mental burden.

In addition, Indonesians prefer to communicate directly rather than by writing or virtually. So, "Indonesians tend to do direct learning compared to e-learning," said Ari.

Blended learning

Meanwhile, the lecturer who serves as the Head Lecturer at the Faculty of Industrial Technology ITB, Ari Widiyanti, explained that there are ways to overcome the weaknesses of e-learning learning. Among other things, he proposed to apply blended learning.

Blended learning, said Ari, is e-learning which is conducted interactively. Over time, the use of blended learning and e-learning continues to grow because of its flexibility that can adjust the place, time, and speed of learning.

So that teachers are expected not to be monotonous in implementing e-learning learning. Instructors should be able to make the learning process more interactive, for example by utilizing other multimedia technologies. One example is video streaming.