Understanding students’ engagement in MOOCs: An integration of self‐determination theory and theory of relationship quality

Abstract

Although Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) attract millions of people to enroll in their courses, the completion rate for most courses is very low. A majority of MOOCs students are not fully engaged in MOOCs, thus leading them to quit in the early stage of the courses. Therefore, it is important to investigate students’ engagement in MOOCs. Drawing on self‐determination theory and the theory of relationship quality, this study proposes a model that conceptualizes the MOOCs engagement as consisting of psychological engagement and behavioral engagement and explores the antecedents of students’ engagement in MOOCs. The research model is tested using data collected from 374 students of Chinese University MOOC. The results show that fulfillment of three basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness have significant positive effects on intrinsic motivation, increasing students’ psychological engagement in MOOCs. Relationship quality significantly predicts students’ psychological engagement, and psychological engagement promotes behavioral engagement in MOOCs. Implications for research and practice as well as limitations of this study are discussed finally.

An application of AHP for students’ perspectives on adopting MOOCs

“…Additionally, they opined that perceived reputation of MOOCs provider had a significant moderating effect on the students' usage intention of MOOCs. Sun et al (2018) explored the antecedents of MOOCs adoption on the basis of SDT and theory of relationship quality. Based on the perceptions of Chinese learners, their results indicated that fulfillment of basic psychological needs namely, relatedness, competence and autonomy, develop intrinsic motivation in learners which in turn increases their psychological engagement in MOOCs.…”

“… Autonomy: Another important feature of MOOCs is that they provide freedom to the learners to pursue the course as per their convenience (Khan et al, 2018). Since learners can join a MOOC at any point of time and complete it at their own pace, they have the freedom in learning which they lack in tradition teaching methods (Sun et al, 2018). Therefore, autonomy of self-managing the course is an important feature of MOOCs.…”

Determining Factors in MOOCs Completion Rates: Application Test in Energy Sustainability Courses

“…Firstly, with "training needs" [IC1-R16], "professional development" [IC1-R17], and "academic training" [IC1-R20] obtained in the pre-test, together, about 99.686% of the participants agreed (see [12], and Tang and Chaw (2019) [19], although it is the "professional development" aspect [IC1-R17] that was more prevalent among technical and engineering graduates than at lower (secondary) or higher (master's and doctoral) levels. These results may well be due to the eminently technical nature of the MOOCs offered, but it is also an indicator that the entry profile of technical career students are eager for continuing education, especially in sustainability and renewable energy issues.…”

“…Several studies have developed instruments that consider the background and demographic data as substantial [8] and literature reviews that highlight the importance of building academic commitment and self-regulation to be effective [9,10]. Self-efficacy takes into account student characteristics to understand why some students do not complete these courses [11], where the theory of self-determination touches on issues and sections such as participants' autonomy, competence, and affinity, and based on this, studies and analyzes the background of MOOC participants [12]. In this way, students who participate in MOOC programs usually have considerable autonomy in their training process, with self-regulated learning [13].…”

Gamification of MOOCs Adopting Social Presence and Sense of Community to Increase User’s Engagement: An Experimental Study

“…Engagement is a popular topic in the literature on MOOCs. Authors have described the construct via literature review [19], through theoretical frameworks, such as selfdetermination theory [20], learning analytics [21], and machine learning algorithms [22]. The studies conducted have identified, among other results, the type of users that engage in MOOCs [4].…”