The Adoption of Massive Open Online Courses: Challenges and Benefits

The Adoption of Massive Open Online Courses: Challenges and Benefits

Emad A. Abu-Shanab, Sajida Musleh
Copyright: © 2018 |Pages: 15
DOI: 10.4018/IJWLTT.2018100104
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Abstract

This article explores the challenges and benefits of using Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). It also tried to understand the issues that would influence students' perceptions regarding MOOCs. The Study utilized the Theory of Reasoned Actions (TRA) to understand the factors influencing respondents' adoption of such environment. An empirical research was conducted using a survey to probe subjects” opinions. Results significantly supported the TRA and predicted the intention to use MOOCs. Perceived usefulness and social influence were significant predictors of MOOCs adoption, but ease of use failed to predict the intentions to use MOOCs. Challenges related to infrastructure, control and assessment were important to sample. Subjects indicated that time and place convenience are important contributions of MOOCs. The adoption of MOOCs would increase the opportunities of benefiting people who are busy, disadvantaged, and geographically remote. It reduces the cost for educational institutions, and attracts more people to acquire degrees and training.
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2. Literature Review

E-learning methods are utilized by many Jordanian universities (Harb & Abu-Shanab, 2009), but with simple and basic tasks. New methods are needed to enrich the educational sector and include more categories of society. MOOCs method is one of the recent and prominent trend in higher education. MOOCs have combined online learning and social media tools (Bassi et al., 2014) and focused on university level learning (Gillani & Eynon, 2014). The history of MOOCs is very short; this term first appeared in 2008 when Stephen Downes and George Siemens offered a free course for 25 students in Manitoba University. Then they followed that by taking the initiative and making courses open for everyone. 2200 persons, whom are not students, had joined and benefited from the courses offered.

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