The Effect of Self-Regulation in a MOOC Environment on the Completion and Performance of Learners

Abstract

MOOCs were created to change the way universities provide education. If to some extent they have succeeded, since they enable many people to attend them without prerequisites and conditions, it is observed that a very small percentage of those who participate finally manage to complete them. In the present study, which is part of the first researcher's doctoral research, we examine the extent to which helping learners apply the Mental Contrasting with Implementation Intentions (MCII) self-regulatory strategy in conjunction with a number of other self-regulatory processes in Zimmerman's model, contributed to the increase of self-regulation, performance and completion rates of those who participated in the first MOOC program of the University of the Aegean (Greece) on "Violence and bullying in schools". 1309 people started the program and completed it, 1050. The two research groups into which they were divided, showed statistically significant differences in their self-regulation, but not in the completion rates of the program (control group: 80.1%, experimental group: 80.3%) and their performance (90%-100% scale: control group: 62.5%, experimental group: 66.5%). Nevertheless, a very high percentage managed to complete it (80.2%), achieving at the same time very high performance. This result shows that self-regulation is not the only factor that contributes to the successful completion of programs and high performance. The instructional design of the program, its organization, and the quality of the instructional material play also an important role. These results can be useful in the design of future MOOCs programs.

The impact of online learning technology on self-regulation and student success

“…In the present research, academic performance in the experimental group that used MOOCs was significantly higher than in the other group. The authors of the experiment in Greece suggest that self-regulation is not the only factor influencing successful knowledge acquisition (Giasiranis and Sofos 2020). The results of the current research confirm this issue.…”

“…The impact of self-regulation on a MOOC environment and student achievement has been discussed by Greek scholars (Giasiranis and Sofos 2020). In modern education, MOOCs help universities to improve the educational services and open assess to education to a large number of students.…”

“…What is more, MOOCs make learning assessable for all learners through open access to educational resources (Beloglazov and Beloglazova 2018). The use of MOOCs provides an opportunity to increase the level of self-regulation of students, as the curriculum can be designed according to the level of knowledge of students, and tasks for classes are selected according to their interests, skills and abilities, which will contribute to the independent formation of workloads, greater involvement in education and, as a consequence, will lead to higher student success rates (Giasiranis and Sofos 2020).…”

Strengthening Primary Health Care Through MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses): A Cross-Sectional Study

“…Majority of the participants got the information about MOOC from social media (17,18). It was found that MOOC courses as part of continuous medical education were significantly correlated with factors such as contribution of MOOC courses to primary care services, age, MOOC as group activity, better expression of participants and self-learning (Tables 6,7) , (6,11,19,20). Along with socioeconomic differences, there may be cognitive-affective differences among all kind of students that contribute to educational inequality (21,22).…”