Discovering the complex effects of navigation cues in an e-learning environment

This paper describes an experiment which was intended to determine the effects of some simple and commonplace social navigation cues on user behaviour. The experiment was designed to inform the ongoing development of a specific self-organizing e-learning environment, but the results suggest a number of more general concerns about the validity of some approaches to the use of social navigation in e-learning as well as e-learning design in general. In particular, combinations of navigation cues and the order in which they are displayed can significantly alter their effects, making it difficult or perhaps impossible to accurately predict how they will affect user behaviour. It is suggested that this may in some ways be a positive feature for systems employing social navigation and an area of potential concern for other e-learning environments.