Motivating MOOC Participants through the Educational Material

Abstract

MOOCs have the potential to educate a large number of people in a specific field of knowledge. Despite the great interest initially shown by those interested in attending them, in the end, a tiny percentage manage to complete them. Among the factors that positively influence active participation and completion of the course are the motivation presented by each participant. This research aims to investigate the extent to which participants in the “Violence and bullying in schools” study were motivated by the course educational material. The educational material was created following the educational design model of Dick et al. [1], and the IMMS questionnaire was used as the research tool. Findings showed that the participants were highly motivated by the educational material, achieving a high completion rate of the program of 80.2%. These findings can be considered in the design of future MOOC programs.