Students’ Perception about Learning using MOOC

Abstract

Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) is an open online course that enhances and provides learning opportunities, particularly in tertiary education, using in-formation technologies. In view of this, this study uses personal characteristics such as learning strategies and cognitive appraisal to identify factors that may influence students in embracing MOOC in their learning process. Moreover, perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU) are the factors that are thought to influence the adoption of MOOC. This study was conducted in a university in Selangor, Malaysia among the pre-university students in the 2018/2019 academic year. Among the 87 students who participated in a MOOC as part of an offline course requirements, 66 students have been ran-domly selected as the respondents. The quantitative analysis indicates that there are significant positive correlations between PU and PEOU and chal-lenges. In other words, the higher the students’ intention to participate in MOOC, the higher is their belief that there would be no difficulties in using it, while having more challenge. In addition, the more the students believe that there are no obstacles in using MOOC, the more deep learners they become and less threatened when using MOOC. On the contrary, when they are more threatened using the MOOC, they tend to become more surface learners. This study demonstrates that the platforms and contents of the MOOC have a major influence on the learning strategies and cognitive appraisal of the students. This mandates multiple options for the MOOC platforms to accommodate learning experiences of students.