Digital Literacy of Educators and their Attitude Towards MOOC Platform in Arab World

Abstract

This study is conducted to identify the level of digital literacy for educators in Arab world who use Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in higher education. In addition, the study aims to determine educators' attitude towards adopting MOOC platforms in teaching some courses in higher education. In the light of this context, proposing a unified MOOC platform for Arab universities is also considered as one of the important aspects to carry out as a part of this study. It is well known that MOOC is adopted by limited number of higher education institutions in the Arab world; however, MOOC as an e-learning platform requires a specific level of digital literacy for all stakeholders. Educators are important members of those stakeholders. Nevertheless, very few studies have been conducted to shed light on the importance of digital literacy on educators’ attitude towards MOOC in Arab countries. Actually, the majority of the studies focus on studying the perception of learners and MOOC users rather than educators. In this study the Digital Literacy Scale (DLS) was used to measure the digital skills of educators. Whereas Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model has been amended to identify the attitude of educators towards MOOC platform. Consistent with this, questionnaires were administered on a sample of 200 educators from higher education institutions in Arab world who participated in MOOC. Moreover, observations and interviews have been conducted to test the hypothesis and to answer the five questions of this study.