Performance, Motivation, Engagement, and Interactions in MOOC-Based Learning

Introduction

With the fast development of information technologies, the recent decades have witnessed huge advancement of massive open online courses (MOOCs). MOOCs could transform and construct high-quality online courses based on information technologies (Wang & Zhu, 2019). Since their birth in 2008, MOOCs have become a significant innovation in online learning and teaching, which integrates contents into courses in university curricula (Castano, Maiz, & Garay, 2015).

MOOCs have obtained wide popularity among various kinds of universities. There are various reasons why students sign in MOOCs. They would like to learn new knowledge or extend their current knowledge. They may feel curious about MOOCs and want to improve their living standards by obtaining certificates or credentials. Most of them dropped out because of a lack of incentive, failure to perceive the contents, no assistance or other distractions. The reasons why teachers teach students via MOOCs include a sense of intrigue, personal rewards, or a sense of altruism. Teachers may also be faced with some challenges in MOOCs-based teaching such as difficulty in assessing student performance, no student feedback, limit of time and finance, and insufficient learning engagement (Hew & Cheung, 2014).

MOOCs could provide rich and flexible education experiences for students and practitioners in various fields (Mullen et al., 2017). MOOCs are actually online courses that can be accessed by a large number of various kinds of students. Characterized by massiveness, rich online resources and datasets carried by MOOC platforms need sophisticated technologies and tools to make learning process go along smoothly, encouraging students to engage in MOOCs (Khalil & Ebner, 2017).

MOOCs were accessed by various levels of students, including those admitted to colleges with less preparation, prior to their entry into university or those having no ability to acquire knowledge (Jiang et al., 2014). Millions of students acquire knowledge via MOOCs designed by hundreds of institutes. By integrating videos, lectures, readings, quizzes with forum discussions, MOOCs attracted student attention and enhanced student engagement (Sunar et al., 2017).

MOOCs are an innovative learning form, combining formal with informal online learning (Walji et al., 2016). Hot debate has arisen about the transformation of higher education into openly accessible form via MOOCs. Concerns about the quality and completion rates of MOOCs have been attracting attention of professionals and researchers. High dropout rates have worried many students and teachers, which may be addressed by proper engagement strategies. Student engagement should, therefore, be seriously considered in MOOCs-based learning and teaching (de Freitas et al., 2015).

Although numerous studies have been committed to MOOCs in a number of aspects, few studies have systematically highlighted student performance, motivation, engagement and interactions in MOOCs-based learning. It is therefore necessary to explore these variables so as to provide solid foundation for future research. On basis of the top cited literature, we proposed five research questions that might be of global interest as follows:

• RQ1: What are top 10 cited works and their major concerns?

• RQ2: What influences student performance in MOOCs-based learning?

• RQ3: How to improve student motivation in MOOCs-based learning?

• RQ4: How to enhance student engagement in MOOCs-based learning?

• RQ5: What roles do interactions play in MOOCs-based learning?