Elsevier

Computers & Education

Volumes 92–93, January–February 2016, Pages 194-203
Computers & Education

Chinese university students' acceptance of MOOCs: A self-determination perspective

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2015.10.012Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Attitude toward MOOCs significantly predicts the intention to use them.

  • Perceived behavioral control (significantly predicts the intention to use MOOCs.

  • Autonomous motivation was an antecedent for all three core constructs of TPB.

  • Controlled motivation acted as an antecedent only for subjective norms.

Abstract

At the start of a teaching revolution, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) represent the latest stage in distance education, and offer open educational resources to students around the globe. With their growing popularity, this study examines the factors that influence students' decisions to use MOOCs. To integrate the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the self-determination theory (SDT) as a research framework, 475 university students in China participated in a survey on the five constructs hypothesized to explain their intention to use MOOCs for learning. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results showed that attitude toward MOOCs and perceived behavioral control (PBC) were significant determinants of intention to use them. Autonomous motivation was an antecedent for all three core constructs of the TPB, while controlled motivation acted as an antecedent only for subjective norms. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Introduction

Higher education today faces a range of challenges, including doubts about its role in society, fragmented functions within universities, concerns about sustainability (Gasevic, Kovanovic, Joksimovic, & Siemens, 2014), and growing diversity of the student population (OECD Publishing, 2013), Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) may transform the current situation. As a recent innovation to online learning, these courses represent the latest stage in the evolution of open educational resources (Mazoue, 2014). Such courses are accessible through the Internet and are usually open to registration without prerequisites or limits on the number of students. With their advantages of large scale, openness and self-organization, MOOCs have attracted 160,000 students from more than 190 countries (Wildavsky, 2014). As of 2014, over 400 universities were offering 2400 MOOCs to 18 million registered students worldwide (Koller, 2014). In China, however, MOOCs are still in their infancy in terms of the variety of courses, the participation of universities and institutions, and the enrollment of students (Wu, Hu, & Zhang, 2013). A dozen MOOCs in Chinese have been developed and published on MOOC platforms such as Coursera and edX. However, only certain prominent institutions such as Peking University and Tsinghua University have launched programs to build MOOC courseware and infrastructure, or to promote pedagogical research on this technology (Wu et al., 2013).

The emergence and rise of MOOCs has aroused extensive debates on whether such courses can meet Chinese learners' needs and if these courses can continue the kind of expanding enrollment that has been seen in Western countries. Advocates believe that MOOCs provide an opportunity to everyone who strives for the chance to receive good-quality higher education from highly ranked universities in developed countries, and that these courses can provide the autonomy that learners find appealing. Other observers are concerned that MOOC providers may prove unable to simultaneously offer courses that are highly diverse in content that accommodate the diversity of purposes and motivations for learning, differing levels of prior knowledge or available resources (Che, Luo, Wang, & Meinel, 2016). Inflexibility or standardization of the courses would inevitably reduce the learners' enthusiasm for participating in MOOCs. As Rai and Chunrao (2016) noted, MOOCs represent a positive trend in higher education, but the attractiveness of their role in student learning is diminishing.

To date, little systematic research has been done on the factors that affect student decisions to take MOOCs. Some researchers have delved into MOOC users' actual posts in MOOC courses to investigate their learning experiences (Liyanagunawardena, Adams, & Williams, 2013, as cited in Cole & Timmerman, 2015). Such studies provide insight into the views of actively engaged MOOC students, but fail to account for the views of “wanderers,” – students who are still uncertain or are considering whether to register for the courses. On the basis of very limited empirical evidence, some researchers have suggested that MOOCs appeal to students who are self-motivated (Bremer, 2012) and who perceive MOOCs to be useful (Xu, 2015).

This study intends to contribute to the extant literature by analyzing the perceptions that current college students in China have toward this new technology. This investigation extends the ongoing discussion of MOOCs in terms of identifying which factors affect students' decisions to take such courses. Specifically, this study examines the cognitive and psychological factors that influence students' adoption of MOOCs in China.

Section snippets

Theory of planned behavior

The theory of planned behavior (TPB) maps the process by which individuals form intentions to carry out behavior that is consistent with their self-determined motives (Sicilia, Sáenz-Alvarez, González-Cutre, & Ferriz, 2015). This theory assumes that an individual's intention to carry out a behavior is a key determinant of its execution (Ajzen & Madden, 1986). According to TPB, intention is determined by three distinct sets of beliefs: (1) beliefs about the likely outcomes of the behavior, which

Self-determination theory

Several researchers have noted the main limitation of TPB, namely its lack of attention to the origins or drivers of the belief-based antecedents of behavioral intentions (Hagger and Chatzisarantis, 2009, Hagger et al., 2002). Previous research has found that the constructs of self-determination theory (SDT) can be integrated into social cognitive theories of intentional behavior such as the TPB (e.g., Hagger et al., 2005, Hagger et al., 2003). SDT is a well-established theory of motivation

Intention in MOOCs: A self-determination perspective

To date, little empirical research has been done on the factors that influence participation in MOOCs. This omission is surprising, considering the rapid development and adoption of this new technology for distance learning. One exception is the study by Jardin and Gaisch (2014), which looked into the cultural and contextual communication factors affecting MOOCs in Europe. These authors suggested that MOOCs have been created by the most individualistic and highly mobile population (American),

Participants and procedure

A total of 475 university students in China, 50.5% of whom were males, completed the online survey. The average age was 21.40 years (SD = 2.32). Of the 475 students, 54.95% majored in science and technology, 38.11% in social science and humanities, and 6.74% in medicine. Almost half used a computer 3–5 h a day. All participants had heard about MOOCs: 85.3% from the internet, 18.3% from teachers, 19.6% from classmates, and 9.3% from other sources, and 84.2% had taken at least one MOOC in China

Evaluation of the measurement model

To estimate the reliability and validity of the factors within the proposed model, composite reliability (CR) was used. According to Hair, Black, Babin, and Anderson (2010), the CR value should be above .6. As shown in Table 1, the CRs were all above .71. The internal consistency of all constructs ranged from .71 to .91. The results of the CFA also showed an acceptable measurement model fit to the data with one correlated error: χ2 = 584.03, χ2/df = 3.376, TLI = .90, CFI = .92, RMSEA = .077,

Discussion

In a context of huge demand among Chinese students for quality instruction delivered online (Sharma, 2013), MOOCs have emerged as educational tools that can meet the learners' needs and interests. In investigating the factors that affect students' perceptions and intentions in using MOOCs, this study extends previous research in two ways. First, it explores the implications that SDT has for TPB by explicitly highlighting the antecedents of the core constructs of TPB from a self-determination

Implications and conclusion

In conclusion, the findings of this research constitute a contribution to both the literature and to practice. The integration of hypotheses highlights plausible limitations of the original TPB model in a distance learning setting. Such integration connects the behavioral, normative and control-related belief constructs in TPB to an integrated motivational model (Hagger et al., 2002). Further research efforts are needed to evaluate the validity of the investigated model with a diverse sample in

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