Abstract
Massive open online course (MOOC) is an innovative educational model that has attracted widespread attention in recent years. Despite a growing number of registered users, many have given up continuously using MOOC platforms after the first-time user experience; thus, a high dropout rate has severely hindered the sustainable development of MOOC platforms. To address the problem, this study started with the quality factors of MOOC platforms and the confirmation of user expectations by integrating the D&M ISS model and the expectation confirmation model into one, with the goal of identifying the factors that affect users’ continuance intention to use MOOC platforms. In this study, online questionnaires were distributed to Chinese users with experience in using MOOC platforms, and a total of 550 valid samples were recovered. In addition, the theoretical model was tested using structural equation modeling (SEM). The research results showed that there are three critical antecedents affecting the confirmation of user expectations for a MOOC platform, including information quality, system quality, and service quality, of which service quality has the greatest impact on users’ expectation confirmation. If user expectations for an MOOC platform are positively confirmed, the perceived usefulness of the platform as well as the satisfaction with it will effectively be improved. Moreover, perceived usefulness has been proven to be a critical factor affecting users’ continuance intention to use MOOC platforms, which is followed by user satisfaction. Compared to the original ECM, the integrated research model has delivered significantly improved explanatory power for users’ continuance intention. Hence, this study makes up for the insufficiency of ECM in explaining the factors affecting users’ expectation confirmation and provides theoretical support for MOOC platform developers.
Highlights
Education plays a vital role in promoting human progress and sustainable development [1,2], especially when current widespread attention has been attached to how to solve unsustainable problems in society through education [3,4,5]
The items on information quality, system quality, and service quality come from the studies by Delone and Mclean [32] and Aparicio et al [34]; confirmation items refer to the studies by Liao et al [71], Cheng [39], and Bhattacherjee [33]; both perceived usefulness and satisfaction items refer to the studies by Bhattacherjee [32] and Liao et al [71]; and continuance intention items come from the studies by Bhattacherjee [33], Cheng [39], and Lin and Wang [81]
The results showed that the maximum variance inflation factor (VIF) value of all variables was 2.127, much lower than the recommended threshold of 10, which suggested that the data had no serious collinearity problems [84]
Summary
Education plays a vital role in promoting human progress and sustainable development [1,2], especially when current widespread attention has been attached to how to solve unsustainable problems in society through education [3,4,5]. Teachers and students are provided with an increasing number of teaching and learning options under the support of mature technology [7], of which massive open online course (MOOC) is attracting more and more attention [8,9]. In 2001, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) launched the Open Educational Resources Movement, which laid the foundation for the development of MOOCs. In 2011, Stanford University offered AI courses that attracted more than 160,000 people to participate online, bringing about the first breakthrough of MOOCs [10].
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
