Abstract
Considering the ubiquity, large volume of similar courses, and the huge cost of a course, it becomes imperative to understand factors affecting MOOCs course enrolments. This paper aims to investigate how the home page elements of a MOOC influence students' enrolments. The elements in the home page include course category, course description, team teaching, university, National Superior Course title, video introduction, course times, and user ratings. Information of these web elements from 673 course web pages was garnered from Chinese university MOOC (a government-backed MOOC platform) and Ordinary Least Squares is employed to testify their influencing effects. In descending order, the results demonstrate that the National Superior Course title, university reputation, and team teaching positively affect course enrolments significantly. Course times show the U-shape effect and user ratings show inverted U-shape effect. Course description and video introduction have no significant effects on enrolments, while the course category shows a significant moderating impact on the relationship between course description and enrolments. The result of this study extends the understanding of the e-learning course enrolments through the lens of a more detailed and nuanced scope on web elements, which have received little attention in education research, and is helpful for assisting courses and platform designers in attracting more learners.
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The authors acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72004139), the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (20ZR1454500).
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Shanshan, S., Wenfei, L. What Elements in the Web Page will Influence the Course Participation? Empirical Evidence from China. Tech Know Learn 29, 433–452 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10758-022-09611-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10758-022-09611-z