An Empirical Study About The Continuous Learning Intentions Of MOOC Users

With the development and popularization of Internet technology,online courses have gradually springing up and got great attention in the world.Online education gives users opportunities to learn on their own terminals through the Internet,so they can ignore the limitations of time and space.On this basis,MOOC,namely the massive open online courses,was born in the United States,MOOC has the characteristics of diversified learning tools and resources,convenient learning style and wide audiences.China has also joined the trend of MOOC,in the early age,many prestigious universities in China released their courses on some international MOOC platforms.China learned from some excellent foreign experience,and with the support of the country and many famous universities,established it own MOOC platforms.Up to now,MOOC platforms in China have great number of users,and it became a considerable scale.Millions of users acquire knowledge through these platforms,and some universities even carry out credit recognition mechanism on the cooperative MOOC platform to encourage more students to study online.We can see that the development of this industry in China has gradually become mature.While MOOC bringing changes to the education sector,more and more people are beginning to realize the economic potential of the online education industry.Now our domestic economic growth depends on the science and technology,both basic knowledge and specific skills training is essential,in addition,recently the craze of postgraduate entrance examination and overseas training is gradually rising,and online education undoubtedly has a huge market.Both official and private also spent a lot of money and attention in this market,big MOOC platforms are also extended its business scope,we might expect,under such a huge market demand,this kind of new mode about online learning in the near future will surely bring huge economic benefits.Therefore,our research pay attention to the characteristics of MOOC platforms and users in their courses,hoping to obtain practical results and provide some suggestions for the development of online education market.After reading relevant literatures in the past,we found that many researches about MOOC,especially the studies in China,were focused on revealing the impact of MOOC on the current educational system,and explored their social significance in combination with the social situation and national conditions.Some authors also give Suggestions on the design of the platform and curriculum,and explore ways to optimize the curriculum through exploring the actual curriculum.However a new problems is growing with the popularity of MOOC,Whatever in China or foreign countries,present MOOC learning mode is a kind of spontaneous course,learners can be unrestricted quit the course at any time,and through the observation and statistics,Chinese and foreign scholars have found that most of the MOOC platform course high school dropout rate is very high,less than 10% of the students can finally completed their full courses,many students suspended in different stages of their course,very few people have come back to finish learning.Such a low course completion rates attracted the attention of scholars,they tired to find out the reasons bring out this result.Therefore,in recent years,exploring the factors that affect MOOC users' motivation to participate in courses,or the factors affect their continuous learning courses and the reasons for quitting courses have become the focus of scholars in relevant fields.Their researches have obtained some achievements which are worth the reference of this paper,and has provided certain foundation for the conception of this paper.We have noticed that on many MOOC platforms,there will be a community for users to exchange experience and knowledge,in which users can do post,reply,thumb up and other interactive behaviors,and in specific courses,there also have a virtual course community for students and teachers to communicate and discuss in various aspects.Through the observation of this kind of community,we find that in this virtual community,there is not only information interaction,but also social and emotional interaction.Based on previous studies on virtual communities,especially those of information exchange,we believe that when users learn MOOC courses,they will be influenced by the corresponding virtual communities,which will affect their willingness to continue learning.Therefore,from the perspective of virtual communities,and based on previous studies on information interactive virtual communities,this paper proposes four factors based on the principle of sense of community to explore its influence on users' willingness to continue learning MOOC courses.On this basis,we also brought in the social cognitive theory,social capital theory,social support theory,and build a structure model containing independent variable,intermediate variable,and dependent variable.Among them,independent variables contain some factors from social cognitive theory,social capital theory and social support theory;intermediate variables include four dimensions of sense of community,namely member identity,influence,needs fulfillment,and emotional connection;and dependent variable is users' continuous learning intentions.This study designed questionnaires to collect data.We chose the users in two Chinese well-known MOOC platform to do the survey,and finally collected 532 valid sample data.We tested the measurement model and structural model with SPSS tool,and finally identified our hypotheses.Based on data result,this study finds that:It is an initial study to explore the components of sense of community's effect on continuous learning intention in MOOC platforms.The finding demonstrates that different components have different effects.It also confirms previous' viewpoint which believe that community is a significant predictor which can affect people's continuous learning intentions in a MOOC.And the result shows that there is a significant relationship between social capital theory,social support theory,social cognition theory and social consciousness,in previous studies,few scholars have paid attention to the relationship between these three social theories and sense of community.In addition,this study has some practical implications.For the managers of MOOC platforms,they can improve the user identity in the course of community members,and try to meet user demand for information on course.In order to promote the continuous learning of users and maintain and strengthen the development and prosperity of MOOC platform,while do some measures about membership,at the same time,Urge the course publishers and maintainers actively communicate with users in the community and solve the questions of learners.In summary,this study focuses on MOOC,an emerging education model,in the environment of Internet economy.From the perspective of course communities of MOOC,it combines the theory of sense of community,social capital theory,social support theory and social cognition theory to analyze their influence on the continuous learning behavior of users in MOOC platform.The results of this study provide certain theoretical significance for the relevant researches in the future,and at the same time,this paper also has certain practical significance.By studying the continuous learning intention of users in the MOOC platform,this paper provides suggestions for the development of MOOC platforms and the blossom of Internet education.