Exploring Media Influences on Individual Learning: Implications for Organizational Learning

Individual learning in organizations is an important activity to be nurtured for corporate procedures, policy, and knowledge sharing. One essential mechanism for individual learning is communication, increasingly occurring via multiple media environments. Understanding individual learning effectiveness depends on our ability to understand and predict media effects. Since recent research on media richness theory suggests that its central proposition does not hold, we explore why this may be. Within the context of communications among individuals in three media environments (asynchronous online, synchronous video conferencing, and face-toface), this research explores individual perceptions of media and outcomes through individual cognitive communication processes. We link cognitive learning theories and their influence on individual learning and media perceptions to media theories. Results suggest that asynchronous media allow time to pause and reflect during learning, playing an important role in determining an individual’s perceptions of media and learning outcomes. This study presents an important contribution to studies of media, technology mediated learning, and individual learning in organizations.