Patterns of student engagement in Malaysian MOOCs / Harrinni Md Noor

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have gained significant
attention among academics and educational practitioners worldwide.
Anyone with an Internet connection from any parts of the world can
participate in a MOOC. In most cases, it is free and students have access
to the teaching videos, course materials and able to participate in the
learning tasks individually or as group work. Students can access to
the online materials anytime and anywhere in the world. The number of
students enrolled in MOOCs has also increased over the past few years. A survey undertaken by The Chronicle of Higher Education in February 2013 suggested that the average MOOC enrolment is 33,000 students (Kolowich, 2013). Stanford AI class, for example, had 160,000 students enrolled when it ran in autumn 2011 (Rodriguez, 2012). In Malaysia, MOOC on the Open Learning platform currently has about 120,824 students enrolled in over 265 courses. Though the number seems to be small as compared to courses in other parts of the world, it is expected to increase in the near future. The Higher Education Ministry at the Ministry of Education Malaysia, has introduced Malaysian Higher Education Plan (2015-2015) that looks into the demands of the 21st century education. MOOC supports the 9th Shift of the Higher Education Blueprint that is Global Online Learning. There are many MOOC platforms but the needs and concern on the teaching and learning through MOOCs remains similar - as to how we might satisfy students’ online education needs that they will make them stay engaged to MOOC. In this research, student engagement refers to the degree of attention and interest that students show through their responses, when they are learning, which extends to the level of motivation they have to learn and progress in the enrolled MOOC.