DEVELOPMENT OF A SCALE TO ASSESS TEACHERS’ ATTITUDE TOWARDS MOOCS

Abstract

MOOC as a latest innovative techniques and tools of teaching and learning is one of the modern method of learning and getting education which provides free, easily accessible, completely online courses, which offer one the opportunity to study with top universities around the world. An attitude is a way of feeling or acting toward a person, thing or situation. Passion for a sport, dislike for a certain actor and negativity toward life in general are each an example of an attitude. So, it is very important to assess the attitude of someone towards a particular thing. The present study has been conducted by the investigator to develop a scale and assess the attitude of teachers towards MOOCs. It is useful to know the opinions, likes-dislikes, curiosity, and willingness of teachers about the MOOCs. For this study, the investigator has followed the different steps of Likert’s Scale to prepare a tool for the collection of data to measure attitude. In first draft, a tool containing 110 items on attitude has been prepared and after following all steps of construction of a scale, 50 items have been selected and finalized for the data collection. The present study primarily descriptive in nature has completed through a survey to assess teachers’ attitude towards MOOCs. First draft has been given to one individual and after the revision second draft has been distributed to conduct a small group try out on a sample of 19 teacher educators teaching in undergraduate and postgraduate departments of a college of education. After initial analysis, the Attitude Scale has been converted into Online Version also and the tool was named as ‘Scale for Teachers’ Attitude towards MOOCs (STAM)’. The data has been collected from 270 teachers of higher institutions for standardizing the scale and computing reliability and validity coefficients. The reliability coefficients computed for the scale have been found to be 0.78 (Alpha) and 0.5 (Split Half). The discriminant validity coefficients have been found to range from 0.35 to 0.89. The other results showed that the attitude of teacher towards MOOCs’ has been found to be positive. SWAYAM and Google Education have been found to be most popular and most used platforms by teachers of higher institutions. Teachers have agreed that cost effectiveness, job opportunity, knowledge of ICT skills and degradation of old value system are important factors in MOOCs. Significance differences have been found to exist in teacher educator’s attitude towards MOOCs with respect to their age and teaching experience.