Educational Technology

November 16, 2015

What Do Current College Students Think about MOOCs?

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:30 am

by Andrew W. Cole and C. Erik Timmerman, JOLT

Faculty, administrators, and media outlets express a range of opinions about Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). As any adoption of MOOCs should ultimately be done to benefit students, this study examines current college students’ understandings of MOOCs. Thematic analysis on qualitative data reveal a pattern of student perceptions that MOOCs can contribute to lifelong learning but are inferior to traditional “for credit” college courses. Student attitudes toward MOOCs revolve around 6 primary themes: reliability, accessibility, content, learning, communication, and outcomes. As the themes identified in the current data mirror previously published MOOC commentaries in many ways, pedagogical discussion of MOOCs should move beyond polarized evaluations and incorporate student perspectives in further empirical investigation of MOOCs as a learning environment.

http://jolt.merlot.org/Vol11no2/Cole_0615.pdf

Share on Facebook

No Comments

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.

Powered by WordPress