Motivation and Engagement in MOOC – Teachers’ Perspective

Abstract

In recent years, the growth of online educational programs has been stimulated by the advancement of the Internet and learning technologies which have transformed the educational landscape. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have gained much popularity over the past few years and have changed the way people learn. In this qualitative study, we interviewed 14 academic staff at a polytechnic in Singapore and examined the key factors that motivated them to sign up for learning via MOOCs as well as factors that affected their choice of MOOC subjects. Our participants consisted of two distinct groups of academic staff, those who completed the MOOCs they signed up for and those who did not complete. We discovered that the two groups of participants were motivated differently when signing up for MOOCs. We also investigated the factors that led to successful completion of MOOCs by one group of academic staff and the challenges faced by the other group that cause their incompletion. Finally, we asked academic staff for their recommendations on how they think MOOCs could be made more engaging and adaptive to learners with different learning needs and styles. Their recommendations on how MOOCs should be administered, delivered and assessed are presented in this study.