FACTORS INFLUENCING THE HMOOC LEARNERS’ ENGAGEMENT AND KNOWLEDGE SHARING BASED ON AN ADAPTED 3P MODEL

Abstract

In the post-pandemic era, hMOOC (hybrid MOOC) is developed by integrating MOOC into on-campus learning and taken as MOOC 3.0. However, the majority of previous literature pays attention to the theoretical discussion of hMOOC design rather than the empirical research of hMOOC success. Therefore, this thesis aims to explore undergraduate learners’ actual perceptions towards hMOOC learning and build a mechanism to examine the predictors and outcome of the learner engagement and knowledge sharing. A mixed methods design was conducted to make a broad and in-depth survey. For quantitative research, 750 samples were selected in Fujian, China by adopting a self-administered questionnaire through wenjuanxing website. Afterwards, descriptive, reliability, validity, path and mediation analysis were conducted on the basis of SPSS and AMOS program for hypothesis testing. For qualitative research, a semi-structured interview was conducted towards 6 undergraduate students from top, medium and low rank of universities in Fujian, China. An inductive analysis was made by coding significant themes. The findings of quantitative and qualitative research are shown as follows.

As for the functions of MOOC in hMOOC learning, statistical analysis demonstrated that most of Chinese learners suggested MOOC had provided the added value and driver to traditional classroom learning, indicating the strong support of Chinese government and institution in fund, policy, teaching facilities and etc. in hMOOC learning. Qualitative results further revealed another function of MOOC under the context of hMOOC learning, “connector”, demonstrating the strong tendency of interaction between student-student and student-instructor in hMOOC learning. As for the relationship between presage and process of hMOOC learning, quantitative findings indicated motivation belief, system and relational quality positively affected learner engagement. However, instructor quality negatively affected learner engagement, in that task quantity and task difficulty assigned by the instructor was beyond the acceptance of learners, which is obtained in qualitative results. What’s more, content quality indirectly affected learner engagement via motivation belief, stating that only if learners consider MOOC content in consistence with their value belief, they will invest in their input. Meanwhile, motivation belief, content, instructor, and relational quality positively affected knowledge sharing, but system quality predicted knowledge sharing negatively. Qualitative results further confirmed that some learners dislike centralized MOOC platform, but preferred decentralized platforms, such as Bilibili platform. As for the relationship between process and product of hMOOC learning, it’s found that there existed positive relationship between learning process and product of MOOC learning. However, learner engagement did not significantly predict academic performance statistically. Qualitative finding supported that even if learners enjoyed the hMOOC learning, they may not obtain good performance due to other factors, such as personal proficiency. As for the interrelationship between presage, process and product of hMOOC learning, both quantitative and qualitative results reported that learner engagement affected knowledge sharing positively. Learner engagement and knowledge sharing were two active mediators influencing the relationship between motivation belief and satisfaction, and between relational quality and satisfaction.

This research provided four theoretical contributions to hMOOC research as well as practical implications in hMOOC learning for administrators, instructors, MOOC designers, technicians, and learners. As for limitation, this research is conducted only in Fujian Province of China. Further study can be conducted toward the whole country in China or make a cross-country comparison by taking cultural factors into consideration. Furthermore, mixed methods were adopted all from the self-report of learners, which cannot avoid subjective bias toward hMOOC learning, so a longitudinal study can be employed in the future by observing the hMOOC learning class for at least one semester.

-