cMOOC: How to assist teachers in integrating motivational aspects in pedagogical scenarios?

Abstract

From the very beginning of MOOCs, education stakeholders and researchers in the field of technology enhanced learning (TEL) considered closely the issues related to dropout of learners in these environments. In a detailed analysis of this question, several authors pointed out that this dropout is due to a lack of learners’ motivation, a lack of learners’ engagement, the isolation, etc. These dropout rates can also be associated with inadequate tools, models and mechanisms allowing personalization and/or adaptation of learning activities. According to these studies, a highly promising solution consists in looking to achieve the supporting of learners’ motivation and engagement via adaptation of pedagogical scenarios. This paper goes in this direction by examining and trying to analyze the literature around the dropout issue in MOOCs. It mainly focuses on finding some possible solutions to adapt teaching scenarios and therefore motivate learners. More precisely, these solutions are essentially based on the connectivist approach, by taking into account four dimensions of educational activities, that is: aggregation, remixing, repurposing and feed forward.