Designing a Successful MOOC – An Empirical Study of the Foreign Language Courses On a MOOCs Platform

Abstract MOOCs have achieved great development in the last five to seven years. However, MOOCs present unique features of their own which distinguish themselves from the traditional classroom interaction. In this article, in order to find out the factors influencing the design of successful MOOCs, we examined the communication mode of MOOCs from the perspective of symbolic interactionism by combining the features of the communication mode of MOOCs as well as that of the traditional classroom interaction. Multiple linear regression analysis was conducted on 280 sample MOOCs from the foreign language courses category of a major Chinese MOOCs platform. The findings indicate that providing options for comprehension, providing options for self-regulation, coherence and temporal contiguity are the key factors for a successful design of MOOCs.