Evaluating the Acceptance of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) among Students of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences

MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course and is an instructional approach that allows hundreds of thousands of students to access -- typically free of charge -- online courses anywhere around the world. The continuous and rapid growth of MOOCs has attracted the attention of educational community and has gained widespread popularity among many universities. Therefore, based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model, an applied research was conducted to study medical students' acceptance to use MOOCs.

It is a descriptive survey that has been done in 2019. The sample consisted of 367 randomly selected students of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences (SUMS). The data collection tool was a questionnaire, the validity and reliability of which were confirmed. The data were analyzed by SPSS and LISREL 8.8 software.

An important part of the results revealed that there was a positive meaningful relationship between "performance expectancy" and "behavioral intention", "effort expectancy" and "behavioral intention", "facilitating conditions" and "use of the system", and "behavioral intention" and "use of the system".

According to the results of this study, MOOC managers' motivation to implement the system effectively strongly depends on the behavioral intention of users, especially students' willingness to accept and use the system.