Understanding Student Motivation, Behaviors and Perceptions in MOOCs

TLDR

Massive Open Online Courses have rapidly expanded and attracted attention, yet high dropout rates reveal a lack of understanding of how well they meet student needs. The study aims to elucidate student motivations, learning perceptions, and experiences with MOOCs to better address retention challenges. Researchers conducted in-depth interviews probing motivations, perceptions, and affordances that may contribute to high dropout rates. The analysis uncovered learning motivations, patterns, and factors influencing retention, suggesting that retention should be viewed both as a problem and an opportunity.

Abstract

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have recently experienced rapid development and garnered significant attention from various populations. Despite the wide recognition of MOOCs as an important opportunity within educational practices, there are still many questions as to how we might satisfy students' needs, as evidenced by very high dropout rates. Researchers lack a solid understanding of what student needs are being addressed by MOOCs, and how well MOOCs now address (or fail to address) these needs. To help in building such an understanding, we conducted in-depth interviews probing student motivations, learning perceptions and experiences towards MOOCs, paying special attention to the MOOC affordances and experiences that might lead to high drop rates. Our study identified learning motivations, learning patterns, and a number of factors that appear to influence student retention. We proposed that the issue of retention should be addressed from two perspectives: retention as a problem but also retention as an opportunity.