Self-motivation challenges for student involvement in the open educational movement with MOOC Retos de automotivación para el involucramiento de estudiantes en el movimiento educativo abierto con MOOC Academic Article in Scopus uri icon

abstract

  • © by FUOC, 2015.This article attempts to answer the questions: What are the challenges, problems and obstacles of involving less self-motivated students in MOOCs and how do they relate to their learning connectivism? The correlations between connectivism and contextualized learning through a formative experience of the Open Educational Movement was analyzed in order to propose strategies that result in greater perseverance, active participation and retention of less self-motivated students in MOOCs. A mixed method approach was used to survey students, interview students and coordinators, and analyze relevant documents. The findings were classified as (1) Challenges: self-motivation, selfregulation abilities, extra time invested, release requirements, goals and inductive activities before the course opening, unsatisfactory identification of students, difficult activities, feedback monitoring and a platform incompatible with balancing its use with that of social networks; (2) Problems: limited information and communication technology skills, difficult feedback research in forums, uncertain peer feedback when not theory-based or scaffolded by teachers, scarce theoretical support in evidence portfolios and a lack of means to help low self-motivated or selfregulated students; (3) Main contextual obstacles: some students cannot count on their employers¿ support or continuous technology access, some students basic wellbeing needs are not met, and inability to contextualize learning; (4) Connectivism: students¿ motivation in the MOOC content and their expanding knowledge networks. Based on these findings, a MOOC design requirement template aimed at supporting students¿ self-motivation and self-regulation through connectivism is provided.

publication date

  • January 1, 2015