scholarly journals Exploring MOOC Acceptance and Readiness among Postgraduate Students at a Higher Learning Institution

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-81
Author(s):  
Mukaramatu Tahiru ◽  
Rosemaliza Kamaludeen

The pattern of learning in recent years have been impacted by the rise of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The impact of MOOCs on the field of education have been investigated by many researches. MOOCs, since their inception have attracted a considerable amount of attention within higher education. This study therefore examines the extent of IIUM postgraduate students’ awareness knowledge of MOOCs, how-to knowledge of MOOCs, actual usage of MOOCs, perceived usefulness of MOOCs, attitude towards MOOCs and intention to use MOOCs for academic purposes. The research question concentrated on the extent of the students’ awareness knowledge, how-to knowledge, perceived usefulness, attitude, actual usage, and intention to use MOOCs for academic purposes. One hundred and ninety respondents were involved in this study. The analysis procedure made use of descriptive statistics to find the percentages, frequencies, mean and standard deviation of data. The findings reveal that majority of the respondents do not have awareness knowledge and how-to knowledge of MOOCs. It also shows very few respondents have actual usage of MOOCs. However, majority of the respondents have positive attitude towards MOOCs and majority of them show their intentions to use MOOCs for academic purposes. The study reveals a vital implication on how IIUM ought to scheme policies to increase adequate awareness of MOOCs and more importantly its usefulness to students.

Author(s):  
Mohammad Awad Al-Dawoody Abdulaal

Abstract — This study aims at investigating the Egyptian instructors’ attitude and behavioral intention to use and develop massive open online courses (MOOCs) (i.e. asynchronous, open-access, web-based courses geared toward enrolling hundreds of learners at a time). The study sample consists of 235 Egyptian university instructors belonging to nine Egyptian universities: Cairo, Ain Shams, Port Said, Suez, Mansoura, Helwan, South Valley, Damietta, and Zagazig universities. The data collected were analyzed within the framework of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) stating that there are three factors that influence the users’ decision about why, when and how they use modern technology: (1) perceived usefulness (PU), (2) perceived ease – of – use (PEOU), and (3) external variables. The results showed that the Egyptian instructors displayed strong positive attitude towards MOOCs (M = 5.56 and SD = 66%). Furthermore, the results showed that the participants have strong behavioral intention to use MOOCs (M = 4.99 and SD = 0.70) and strong behavioral intention to develop them (M= 5.91 and SD= 0.53). The results also displayed a moderate correlation between the participants’ attitude and behavioral intention to develop MOOCs (R = 0.474)


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 63-71
Author(s):  
An Minh Ngoc Pham ◽  
Thao Lai Phuong Pham ◽  
Gam Hong Huynh ◽  
Thu Hoang Minh Vo ◽  
Anh Ngoc Kim Nguyen ◽  
...  

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) attract many researchers because of their massiveness, openness, machine and peer assessment, yet there are still many questions to be answered. This study was conducted at FPT University in Can Tho during the 2020-2021 academic year using the quantitative approach. A purposeful sampling technique was used to select 226 participants who partook at least one MOOC on the Coursera platform. The questionnaire consists of 18 items adapted from Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) developed by Davis (1989), and Learning Strategies, by Marton and Säljö (1976). The findings showed that perceived ease of use (PEOU), and perceived usefulness (PU) have a great impact on students’ intention to use MOOCs in the future, PU, however, has a stronger and more direct correlation to the acceptability of MOOCs. Furthermore, surface learning strategy has a negative effect on the intention to enroll in MOOCs while deep learning strategy was not significantly correlated with intended future use of MOOCs. More importantly, a valuable finding was that surface learning strategy was in inverse proportion to courses variable and it can be lessened. Our findings are expected to offer a multi-dimensional view for students, especially those in the current context as well as MOOCs developers in order to design curricula.


Author(s):  
Emad A. Abu-Shanab ◽  
Sajida Musleh

This article explores the challenges and benefits of using Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). It also tried to understand the issues that would influence students' perceptions regarding MOOCs. The Study utilized the Theory of Reasoned Actions (TRA) to understand the factors influencing respondents' adoption of such environment. An empirical research was conducted using a survey to probe subjects” opinions. Results significantly supported the TRA and predicted the intention to use MOOCs. Perceived usefulness and social influence were significant predictors of MOOCs adoption, but ease of use failed to predict the intentions to use MOOCs. Challenges related to infrastructure, control and assessment were important to sample. Subjects indicated that time and place convenience are important contributions of MOOCs. The adoption of MOOCs would increase the opportunities of benefiting people who are busy, disadvantaged, and geographically remote. It reduces the cost for educational institutions, and attracts more people to acquire degrees and training.


2022 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Archana Shrivastava ◽  
Ashish Shrivastava

Purpose This study aims to investigate the attributes of the online programme that are considered and compute their relative importance in the purchase decision. This study aims to identify the most lucrative bundling of these attributes and their levels that can be used by online education companies to craft their product design strategy to attract customers with the most attractive offering. Design/methodology/approach This research paper endeavours to identify the attributes of online education, which customers consider for making a purchase decision. Exploratory factor analysis followed by confirmatory factor analysis was used to identify the key attributes of online education programmes. This paper uses the conjoint analysis technique to identify the most preferred bundling of attributes, which online education companies can package to attract customers. Findings Based on various attributes and their respective levels, it is evident the most lucrative design for attracting customers to buy online education programmes is to provide certification from a reputed international university, which requires an investment to the tune of 3,000–5,000. The duration of four weeks with asynchronous pedagogy and access to course material vial uniform resource locator (URL) is a preferred feature. Access via a mobile application is more preferred over Web access. A phone application is known to be optimised, and most people are using mobile phones to access the internet. Online certification or degrees that are considered as valid employment qualifications were most preferred over other reasons. Originality/value There is a dearth of studies on massive open online courses (MOOCs) from a product design perspective. There is a gap in the context of the features to be included in the MOOCs package so that the customer can find more value in it, and the companies can benefit by expanding their customer base. The research question which this study endeavours to explore is what attributes consumers of MOOCs consider when making a purchase decision. This study will also find the relative importance of these attributes.


Author(s):  
Clare Lade ◽  
Paul Strickland ◽  
Elspeth Frew ◽  
Paul Willard ◽  
Sandra Cherro Osorio ◽  
...  

This chapter examines the ways in which teaching and training in tourism, hospitality and events have evolved and adapted to the contemporary demands of academia and industry. It explores the development of education in tourism, hospitality and events, the contemporary factors which influence teaching and learning, and discusses the rise of Massive Open Online Courses with a particular focus on their potential application within tourism, hospitality and events curriculum. The chapter concludes by providing an overview of Open Badges and their importance in education. At the time of writing, the world has been confronted by the Covid-19 global pandemic which has caused great disruption at all levels. The impact of Covid-19 is briefly addressed in this chapter as the enforcement of social distancing measures has led to a significant increase globally in online education.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 811
Author(s):  
Merilin Säde ◽  
Reelika Suviste ◽  
Piret Luik

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) can potentially affect the lives of millions of people, but there is little research on how a programming MOOC could affect participants’ lives after participation. In Estonia, we have organised several programming MOOCs over the years, attended by over 14,000 people. This inspired us to develop and validate a scale for measuring the impact of programming MOOC on participants’ lives. We analysed data from 1261 MOOC participants who had completed at least one of our programming MOOCs. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to validate the developed scale. The final model fitted quite well to the data. We found that the factors that influence learners’ lives after a MOOC include acquired learning skills, interest in continuing computer science related studies, learning experience gained from the MOOC, the MOOC’s impact on work and personal life, and new contacts that are established with other participants and organisers. We also compared the means of the factors. The highest-rated factor was related to the learning experience from the MOOC and the lowest-rated was related to finding new contacts through the MOOC.


Author(s):  
Nurbiha A Shukor ◽  
Zaleha Abdullah

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) allows teaching and learning for everyone. This means that people from any learning background can join any of the courses offered through MOOC platforms. Although learning materials are offered for free, learning retention and learning engagement were found to be consistently low alt-hough some MOOC are offered by well-known instructors. Many recent studies tried to understand the suitable instructional design in MOOC to improve learning en-gagement and retention. This study is an exploratory study to evaluate the potential of using learning analytics to improve instructional design in MOOC. Data were col-lected from a MOOC offered for two consequent years in a public university in Ma-laysia. The impact of learning analytics on MOOC instructional design was also dis-cussed.


Author(s):  
Irma Pozón-López ◽  
Elena Higueras-Castillo ◽  
Francisco Muñoz-Leiva ◽  
Francisco J. Liébana-Cabanillas

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (S1) ◽  
pp. S35-S47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Scott

The contemporary university is subject to two, apparently contradictory, forces. The first is the drive towards the modernisation of its governance and management, often in ways that reflect corporate structures more familiar in the private sector (and other parts of the reformed public sector). This drive has been accompanied by the growth of performance management, both of institutions and individual teachers and researchers; the more prescriptive identification of goals and targets (at the expense, perhaps, of traditional notions of autonomy and academic freedom); and more explicit – and intrusive? – forms of audit, accountability and evaluation. The other force is the development of new modes of learning, a more open curriculum and more distributed patterns of research. Examples include the popularity of (technology-enhanced) self-directed learning, the growth of massive open online courses (MOOCs), the spread of open-source publication and greater emphasis on the impact and application of research. Both forces reflect deep-rooted changes in the nature of modern higher education and research systems, and it would be misleading to see them as always or inevitably in conflict. However, they do pose new dilemmas about how to maintain an appropriate balance between the necessary management of the large, complex and heterogeneous organisations that modern universities have become and their capacity for innovation and creativity.


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