Massive Open Online Courses: Awareness, Readiness and Preferences of Pre-service Teachers

Abstract

A MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) is an online course that can be accessed by an unlimited number of participants dispersed geographically. Although MOOCs are in trend for the past few years, a lot of concerns are being raised because of the high enrolment rate, but low completion rate. One of the major reasons for this difference in enrolment and completion rates can be the lack of readiness of participants in using MOOCs. This study attempts to explore the pre-service teachers’ readiness in using MOOCs. An online questionnaire was used to collect data from 159 pre-service teachers of Delhi/NCR universities. The collected data was analysed through MS Excel. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data for final interpretation. The results revealed that although many pre-service teachers are aware of MOOCs, only a few of them have used them yet. Most of the pre-service teachers are found to have the technological accessibility required for using MOOCs but some of them still lack computer peripherals like headphones or microphones, which may be required during the course. The findings also reveal that pre-service teachers’ competence level was higher than their motivation level. In addition, it was also found that those who are ready for MOOCs still prefer faceto-face more over online or remote involvement.