A Motivational Design Approach to Integrate MOOCs in Traditional Classrooms

Despite the promising benefits of blended Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) over traditional face-to-face class, it is still unclear how MOOCs should be integrated in the classroom. The findings regarding the effectiveness of such blended learning approach is mixed and inconclusive. The present study aims to address this gap by investigating how MOOCs can be embedded in traditional classrooms. An embedded MOOC learning approach is proposed, in which students use MOOCs together with their classmates during class under the guidance of their class instructors. Drawing from a motivational design perspective, we adopted the ARCS model (i.e. Attention, Relevance, Confidence and Satisfaction) to evaluate the proposed learning approach and compare it with traditional classroom learning and blended learning approaches. The results showed that students in the embedded MOOC learning group had higher evaluations regarding attention, satisfaction and relevance perceptions than those in the traditional face-to-face learning group. In addition, the embedded MOOC learning approach received higher scores in terms of attention, relevance, confidence and satisfaction perceptions compared to traditional approach of blended MOOCs. The implications for research, educators and practitioners are discussed at the end of the paper.