Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have gained attention from learners and teachers across the globe, but high dropout rate is a matter of concern, which makes it imperative to understand the reasons. From the theoretical perspective that learners learn more effectively through collaborative and socially cohesive communities, this qualitative study is focused to understand how learners experience facilitated and nonfacilitated MOOCs. It attempts to explore learners' perspectives from two different groups of learners learning the same MOOC of English for journalism. One of the groups is facilitated for the first week of the course by instructors through face-to-face interactions, whereas the other is not. The perspectives of the learners from both groups regarding their experiences are analyzed through comparative and contrastive thematic analysis of the data collected through participant observation and semistructured interviews of focus groups selected through purposive sampling technique. Though learning the same ESP MOOC, the learners (18–35 in age; all of them university students), register partly similar and largely contrastive learning experiences across the facilitated and nonfacilitated MOOC environments. It is found that the learners, when facilitated, develop a stronger sense of belongingness, accountability, responsibility, peer competition, networking, and solution of issues, which results in retention of the learners. This study foregrounds the effectiveness of hybrid MOOCs, in terms of retention and satisfaction of learners.

中文翻译：

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通过辅助和非辅助 MOOC 实现特定目的的英语：对学习者观点的分析

大规模开放在线课程 (MOOC) 已引起全球学习者和教师的关注，但高辍学率令人担忧，因此必须了解原因。从学习者通过协作和社会凝聚力社区更有效地学习的理论角度来看，这项定性研究的重点是了解学习者如何体验便利化和非便利化 MOOC。它试图从学习相同的新闻英语 MOOC 的两个不同学习者群体中探索学习者的观点。其中一个小组在课程的第一周由讲师通过面对面的互动进行辅导，而另一个则没有。通过对通过有目的的抽样技术选择的焦点小组的参与者观察和半结构化访谈收集的数据进行比较和对比主题分析，分析了来自这两个群体的学习者对其经历的看法。尽管学习相同的 ESP MOOC，但学习者（18 岁至 35 岁；都是大学生）在便利和非便利 MOOC 环境中注册了部分相似但大体相反的学习体验。研究发现，学习者在得到帮助时，会产生更强的归属感、责任感、责任感、同伴竞争、网络和问题解决的意识，从而留住学习者。本研究突出了混合 MOOC 在学习者的保留率和满意度方面的有效性。