Internet Learning Volume 4, Number 2, Fall 2015 | Page 62

The Tangible and Intangible Benefits of Offering Massive Open Online Courses: Faculty Perspectives Overall, the participants stated MOOCs offer a wide variety of benefits. However, even without prompting on the survey, some participants noted drawbacks of MOOCs. The Drawbacks of offering MOOCs One of the major of concerns for any institution offering courses, face-to-face or online, are completion rates. Participants in this study noted that for MOOCs, specifically, the completion rate is roughly 5% due to many students enrolling in a course and then dropping out. This low completion rate may seemingly reflect that MOOCs, as noted by participants, offer a very low level of educational benefits or may be seen as a supplement to teaching and not the primary means of delivering course content. Faculty who participated in this study suggested that MOOCs “online offering effectiveness is limited to teaching definitions and for reinforcement practice” as there are some courses that simply and logically cannot be taught online. Reflecting this sentiment, one participant stated, “A simple example is swimming. Few people will learn how to swim by taking an online course” and suggested that this example can be extrapolated to many other fields of study. According to participants, these drawbacks and limitations also impact how students perceive MOOCs. Because of the lack of pressure to achieve high grades (a cited benefit by some participants), students may view MOOCs as optional entertainment rather than an academically rigorous course. However, another participant suggested that the limitations of MOOCs may relate to the student’s motivation. This participant noted “if the user [student] is not motivated (i.e., use of the MOOC format is coerced), then the benefits of MOOCs are zilch”. The lack of motivation by students may provide insight into the mixed results universities may receive on student success. As one faculty participant explained, “universities across the country are having mixed results. They will not necessarily be “better” or “worse”, but like any course, it will depend on the structure of the course and learning styles of the participants”. Yet, the lack of motivation on the instructor’s behalf to create an engaging MOOC course design may be explained by an instructor’s previous experience with and preference for another online course program. One participant explained preference for another online program in the following response: I teach many online courses and have since 2001 and I have been closely following the professional development issue. MOOCs are useful if offered entirely freely online, but as a replacement for actual courses (online, with regular caps of 25-30, or face-toface) they are worse than useless as current studies are showing. However, I strongly support [online program]. Instructors who have spent several years teaching may have experience with other online course programs and find those may yield more success for students than MOOCs. Whether the drawbacks of MOOCs are related to the lack of motivation from the student, instructor, or the university which provides little or no support, MOOCs present real challenges for teaching students online. As institutions and instructors work to overcome the challenges of offering MOOCs, one participant reminds the researchers in this study that first, everyone must be able to define and understand MOOCs. While question branching logic 61