Research On The Influencing Factors Of Chinese Learners' Acceptance Of The Chinese MOOC Platform

The fast development of modern technology and the increasingly important role of China’s economy on the world stage has made Chinese language long-distance learning more and more important.In 2008,Dave Cormier started the first Massive Open Online Course(MOOC),which from 2012 onwards started to have a big impact on educational practice and research.Since then,many Chinese Universities started to set up their own Chinese language MOOCs.If an organization or institution wants to implement a new technology,they must understand the influencing factors on the user′s intention to use that technology.The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology(UTAUT)is one of the most frequently used models to research those factors.The specific characteristics of a technology and other circumstances of the usage can result in different factors influencing a user′s intention to use.This thesis is using the UTAUT model as basis and is extending the model with specific factors related to Chinese language education that might also have an influence.Besides the core constructs of the UTAUT model,Performance Expectancy,Effort Expectancy,Social Influence,and Facilitating Conditions,this thesis also tests whether or not Hedonic Motivation,Self-Management of Learning,Speaking Chinese Anxiety and Perceived Human-Human-Interaction might have an influence on Use Intention.After building the research model,this thesis conducts a pre-test and a final survey with 476 international Chinese language students from 76 different countries to test the research hypothesis.After analyzing the structural equation model,this research found Perfo rmance Expectancy,Social Influence,Hedonic Motivation,and Perceived Human-HumanInteraction have a significant positive effect on Use Intention.Furthermore,Gender,Age,Native Language,Usage Experience,Chinese Level and Study Language Experience can cause different grouping results for the influencing factors.Finally,this thesis gives recommendations for the design and promotion of Chinese Language MOOCs,including increasing the usefulness of the course for studying Chinese language,increasing th e hedonic motivation for the user,increasing positive word of mouth and using the influencing role of Chinese teachers on the students intention to use the course,increase the human to human interactivity of the course,not concentrate on the ease of use and facilitating conditions of the students,pay attention to the different group characteristics of the students and differentiate between different individual characteristics of the students.