4.1. Course structure and teaching methods 8

4.2.The role of the instructors in the MOOC 8

4.3. Learners’ degree of satisfaction with instructional design quality of the course 9

4.4. Students' views and expectations for MOOCs 10

5. Implications 12

5.1. How instructors can engage students 12

5.2. How learners can engage themselves 15

6. Conclusion 16

Appendix 17

References 20

1. Introduction

 Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have caused a revolution in education to happen (Agarwal, 2012). The courses are delivered in an online environment with evident disparity from traditional courses. MOOCs attract a variety of audiences over a relatively short period of time due to its openness and freeness. Many instructors and higher education institutions launched various courses in different areas through MOOC platforms such as Coursera and edX to actively respond the MOOC call. The influence of MOOCs goes beyond offering free and open education to students throughout the world, and is now developing towards new blended learning scenarios in the universities. MOOCs are utilized to improve teaching and learning in the form of e.g., ‘‘flipped classrooms’’ (i.e. students first watch videos with the theory at home and do the provided exercises with automatic correction based on own understanding, and later go to the class to address problems with instructors).

Despite the momentum for MOOCs, there has been an ongoing debate about their academic value and significance since MOOCs were initially introduced (Conole, 2013). The opportunities MOOCs offered indeed make educational resources available to anyone and everywhere and further strengthen the impact and reputation of Chinese universities. Concerns, however, have also been voiced in the development of effective MOOC by academics that if MOOCs can facilitate meaningful and effective learning. Hu and Cusumano(2013) said that the openness and freedom of MOOC might in turn result in the lack of organization, management, and moderation and eventually the  lack of effectiveness due to low completion rate which are normally related to a conventional course. 

Completion rates of these classes are dim compared to traditional courses. On average, up to 90% of learners who enroll in an MOOC quit the course because of a lack of stimuli, failure to understand the learning materials, having no one to ask for help, or having other better alternatives to fulfill. In order to examine this phenomenon, a survey and semi-structured interviews were carried out on students' feelings and views about learning in MOOCs and their suggestions and expectations. (Breslow, 2013; Wang Baohua & He Xinlei, 2015). Completion rate might not be the best method to assess attendees’ learning in MOOCs, but these low rates indeed raise questions concerning their effectiveness (Belanger & Thornton, 2013; Fini, 2009). The objective of this study is to identify factors that affect inpiduals' continuous participation using MOOCs from learners’ and instructor’ perspectives, which a limited amount of research has previously explored. The results of this study may increase students' continuity and give some suggestions for future research in developing effective MOOCs. 

2. Literature Review

My ways to gather the materials are as follows: online purchasing, library borrowing and CNKI downloading. I Searched the Internet as well as the library of HZNU to collect professional books, journals and other relevant references. First I searched for related articles in electronic databases with the keyword Massive Open Online Course, and then I started snowballing searches on the relevant papers cited in the found articles. Three electronic databases were used for these two periods of literature review: Academic Search Premier, Education Research Complete and HowNet. As of Jan. 12, 2015, a total of 30 literatures were found.