Understanding the massive open online course (MOOC) student experience: An examination of attitudes, motivations, and barriers
Abstract
During the widespread development of open access online course materials in the last
two decades, advances have been made in understanding the impact of instructional
design on quantitative outcomes. Much less is known about the experiences of learners
that affect their engagement with the course content. Through a case study employing
text analysis of interview transcripts, we revealed the authentic voices of participants
and gained a deeper understanding of motivations for and barriers to course engagements
experienced by students participating in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). We sought
to understand why learners take the courses, specifically Introduction to Chemistry
or Data Analysis and Statistical Inference, and to identify factors both inside and
outside of the course setting that impacted engagement and learning. Thirty-six participants
in the courses were interviewed, and these students varied in age, experience with
the subject matter, and worldwide geographical location. Most of the interviewee statements
were neutral in attitude; sentiment analysis of the interview transcripts revealed
that 80 percent of the statements that were either extremely positive or negative
were found to be positive rather than negative, and this is important because an overall
positive climate is known to correlate with higher academic achievement in traditional
education settings. When demographic data was added to the sentiment analysis, students
who have already earned bachelor's degrees were found to be more positive about the
courses than students with either more or less formal education, and this was a highly
statistically significant result. In general, students from America were more critical
than students from Africa and Asia, and the sentiments of female participants' comments
were generally less positive than those of male participants. An examination of student
statements related to motivations revealed that knowledge, work, convenience, and
personal interest were the most frequently coded nodes (more generally referred to
as “codes”). On the other hand, lack of time was the most prevalently coded barrier
for students. Other barriers and challenges cited by the interviewed learners included
previous bad classroom experiences with the subject matter, inadequate background,
and lack of resources such as money, infrastructure, and internet access. These results
are enriched by illustrative quotes from interview transcripts and compared and contrasted
with previous findings reported in the literature, and thus this study enhances the
field by providing the voices of the learners.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/15672Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1016/j.compedu.2017.03.003Publication Info
Shapiro, HB; Lee, CH; Wyman Roth, NE; Li, K; Çetinkaya-Rundel, M; & Canelas, DA (2017). Understanding the massive open online course (MOOC) student experience: An examination
of attitudes, motivations, and barriers. Computers and Education, 110. pp. 35-50. 10.1016/j.compedu.2017.03.003. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/15672.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Dorian Canelas
Associate Professor of the Practice of Chemistry
Prof. Canelas has been active in implementation of student-centered pedagogies and
developing programs to increase undergraduate retention in science tracks. Research
interests include chemical education research and the scholarship of teaching and
learning as well as macromolecules for industrial and biological applications, such
as microelectronics, coatings, membranes, gene therapy delivery, and blood compatibility.

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