Students’ and instructors’ use of massive open online courses (MOOCs): Motivations and challenges
Published | June 2014 |
Journal | Educational Research Review Volume 12, Issue June 2014, Pages 45 - 58 |
ABSTRACT
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are among the latest e-learning initiative to attain widespread popularity among many universities. In this paper, a review of the current published literature focusing on the use of MOOCs by instructors or students was conducted. Our primary goal in doing this is to summarize the accumulated state of knowledge concerning the main motivations and challenges of using MOOCs, as well as to identify issues that have yet to be fully addressed or resolved. Our findings suggest four reasons why students sign up for MOOCs: the desire to learn about a new topic or to extend current knowledge, they were curious about MOOCs, for personal challenge, and the desire to collect as many completion certificates as possible. Up to 90% drop out due to reasons including a lack of incentive, failure to understand the content material and having no one to turn to for help, and having other priorities to fulfill. Findings suggest three main reasons why instructors wish to teach MOOCs: being motivated by a sense of intrigue, the desire to gain some personal (egoistic) rewards, or a sense of altruism. Four key challenges of teaching MOOCs are also surfaced: difficulty in evaluating students’ work, having a sense of speaking into a vacuum due to the absence of student immediate feedback, being burdened by the heavy demands of time and money, and encountering a lack of student participation in online forums. We conclude by discussing two issues that have yet to be fully resolved – the quality of MOOC education, and the assessment of student work.Highlights
• Most MOOCs use recorded video lectures and discussion forums to engage students.
• Students enrol in MOOCs mainly to learn a new topic or increase current knowledge.
• However, dropout rate is high; only 10–20% of students complete the courses.
• Instructors offer MOOCs due to a sense of intrigue, altruism, or egoistic motives.
• Quality of MOOC education and MOOC business model are some unresolved issues.
Keywords | e-learning · · MOOC · motivation · online learning |
ISSN | 1747938X |
Refereed | Yes |
Rights | 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. |
DOI | 10.1016/j.edurev.2014.05.001 |
URL | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1747938X14000128 |
Other information | Educational Research Review |
Export options | BibTex · EndNote · Tagged XML · Google Scholar |
Viewed by 126 distinct readers
CLOUD COMMUNITY REVIEWS
The evaluations below represent the judgements of our readers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Cloud editors.
Click a star to be the first to rate this document
▶ POST A COMMENT
SIMILAR RECORDS
Towards a model of engaging online students: Lessons from MOOCs and four policy documents
Hew, Khe Foon
The paper describes a model of engaging students in fully online or blended learning environments. To do this, I first discuss the notion of student engagement and how it relates to the Self-Determination Theory of ...
Match: Hew, Khe Foon; e-learning; motivation; online learning
Massive, open, online, and national? A study of how national governments and institutions shape the development of MOOCs
Tømte, Cathrine; Fevolden, Arne Martin; Aanstad, Siri
We explore interpretations of MOOCs around the globe and, in particular, interpretations of MOOCs in Norway. Based on a review of previous studies relevant to these topics, we present two contrasting views on the ...
Match: motivations; MOOC; online learning
Motivating MOOC participants
Mokwa-Tarnowska, Iwona; Gdańska, Politechnika
Over the last four years, massive online open courses (MOOCs) have attracted millions of learners from around the
world. Many factors seem to play an important role in them gaining in popularity. One of them is ...
Match: e-learning; MOOC; motivation
Effectiveness of integrating MOOCs in traditional classrooms for undergraduate students
Israel, Maria Joseph; Conrad, Dianne; McGreal, Rory
The idea of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) has attracted a lot of media attention in the last couple of years. MOOCs have been used mostly as stand-alone online courses without credits. However, some researchers, ...
Match: e-learning; MOOC; online learning
Gamification: A key determinant of massive open online course (MOOC) success
Aparicio, Manuela; Oliveira, Tiago; Bacao, Fernando; Painho, Marco
Massive open online courses (MOOCs), contribute significantly to individual empowerment because they can help people learn about a wide range of topics. To realize the full potential of MOOCs, we need to understand ...
Match: e-learning; MOOC
Designing for quality?
Littlejohn, Allison; Hood, Nina
There are significant complexities in interpreting and measuring quality in MOOCs. In this chapter, we examine experts' perceptions of how to measure quality in MOOCs, using empirical data we gathered through ...
Match: motivations; MOOC
MOOCs and academic libraries: a chance or a problem? An overview
Testoni, Laura
Massive open online courses(MOOCs) are online courses free and open to anyone: the MOOCs enrollement is essentially unlimited.
Purpose of this essay is to offer an overview on the debate about the development of the ...
Match: e-learning; MOOC
MOOCs in Europe: Overview of papers representing a collective European response on MOOCs as presented during the HOME conference in Rome November 2015
Bang, Joergen; Dalsgaard, Christian; Kjaer, Arne; O’Donovan, Maria; et al.
Table of contents
Foreword
Part 1: Regional MOOC initiatives
Building OOC layers on top of existing courses
(M)OOCs in Iceland: Language and learning communities
EduOpen network in Italy
Part 2: Role media ...
Match: e-learning; MOOC
MOOCs: A learning journey
Smith, Becky; Eng, Min; Cheung, Simon K. S.; Fong, Joseph; et al.
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have been radically changing the direction of online education in the last few years. Although sharing many common features, there has been an emergence of two distinct varieties of ...
Match: e-learning; MOOC
Presentation to UNCTAD's advisory group on "Developing skills, knowledge and capacities through innovation: E-Learning, M-Learning, cloud-Learning"
Downes, Stephen
Match: e-learning; MOOC