A Concept Review on MOOCs Research Findings – A Qualitative Approach

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) platforms play a vital role nowadays in knowledge creation and enhancement. Though, initially these programs and courses were offered freely, now due to emergence of technology and requirement, they were offered in both free and paid mode. Currently, the MOOCs provide various programs and courses that are administered by various international higher education institutions and private organizations. Moreover, the COVID – 19 has triggered all the universities, colleges and institutions to move towards MOOC platforms as an online learning method. The students used these MOOC platforms to gain and enhance required knowledge in this competitive world. Due to this emergence, various research studies were conducted during the past years using different research methodologies and scopes to identify the usage, gaps, trends, advantages, disadvantages and user satisfactions. This paper reviews some major researches since 2010 and summarizes the findings to support future research scopes. The 16 research articles that were having more than 100 Google citation counts were considered for this study and analyzed. Currently, the number of students joining and completing the courses through online is significantly increased which showed that the learners’ intention on getting the knowledge in the area of specialization has increased. Moreover, the acceptance and recognition of online courses and programs by various employers and institutions have been increase which opens a great opportunities for continuous and life-long learnings. Though, the completion rates of courses and programs thorough online platforms are increased comparatively now-a-days, the success rates, knowledge acquisition rates, actual participation rates and learning outcome attainment rates need to be studied in depth.