Review: Design, Motivation and Performance in a Cooperative MOOC Course
Comunicar, n. 44, v. XXII, 2015
by Castaño, C., Maiz, I., & Garay, U.
Nowadays, MOOCs are seen as the latest evolution in online learning for their potential to offer quality, large-scale education worldwide. While little research has focused on measuring learning outcomes. This paper shows the results of a research study that focused on the pedagogical design of a cooperative MOOC and its influence on motivation and academic results. There are three questions to be explored in this research, including:
a) Is there a relationship between academic performance and the pedagogical design of the course?
b) Is there a relationship between students’ motivation and the pedagogical design of the course?
c) Is there a relationship between academic performance and students’ motivation?
A Delphi study was used to validate the design, and the motivation variable was controlled using the Instructional Materials Motivation Survey (IMMS). The research discovers that the pedagogical design of the course has an influence on both academic performance and students’ motivation. As for the third question, although there is no direct relationship between global motivation and performance, yet there exists such a relationship between global motivation and one of the factors that constitutes motivation, namely satisfaction.
This research mainly used a quantitative research method to analyze the relationship between the pedagogical design and students’ motivation and academic results. Such kind of data and analysis can make readers clearly understand the research results. While more details are expected to be seen in the further research of this topic, such as how the pedagogical design influence on the students’ motivation and academic results. In my own opinion, qualitative research method can be used as a supplementary means in that situation.
This review article is composed by
Ms. XIAO Wan
Doctoral student,
Nanjing Normal University
