Student Personality Characteristics Differ in MOOCs Versus Blended-Learning University Courses

Abstract

This article conveys how online technology in education has become increasingly popular, especially blended-learning and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Although, research to date on blended-learning and MOOCs have revealed various factors that contribute to student success; however, systematic research on the personality characteristics of the learner, and how this could affect course performance remains sparse. This article is based off of the authors survey of students in a MOOC and a blended-learning course in Introductory Psychology about various personality characteristics that they believed could influence course performance. The results indicate that students in the MOOC versus blended-learning course exhibit different personality traits, and that these traits are associated with MOOC but not blended-learning course performance. These findings have important implications for fine tuning online teaching techniques to the personality types of the learners, which could improve course performance.