Teacher candidates’ satisfaction with massive open online courses in Turkey

Abstract

Adult education, especially teacher education, is one of the most important issues in Turkey in order to increase the quality of education and to keep up with the countries which aim to become one of the most competitive and knowledge-based economy in the world. Therefore, most of the universities started to improve their distance learning provisions by using massive open online courses (MOOCs). The purpose of this study is to understand teacher candidates’ opinions on MOOCs and their satisfaction with MOOCs. A mixed method including qualitative and quantitative approaches was used in this study. Results show that the MOOCs have a positive effect on teacher candidates’ personal development and learning life; therefore, they are satisfied with the MOOCs. Only the satisfaction level in learner–instructor interaction is lower in asynchronous courses. As adult learners, they wanted to be more active in MOOCs. These findings improve the understanding of MOOC’s learning satisfaction and contribute to design and develop better MOOCs according to learners’ needs and demands.

Keywords: adult education, teacher education, distance education