Social interaction in MOOCs: The mediating effects of immersive experience and psychological needs satisfaction

Drawing on self-determination theory (SDT), the study proposes a model to reveal the underlying mechanism by which social interaction shapes learning engagement. This study uses survey data from 318 massive open online courses (MOOCs) learners and structural equation modeling method to assess the proposed model. The results show that immersive experience and three psychological needs satisfaction (i.e., competence, relatedness, and autonomy needs) fully mediate the effect of interaction on MOOC learning engagement. Psychological needs satisfaction demonstrates different effectiveness on learning engagement. Specifically, competence need satisfaction is shown to be the strongest predictor of MOOC learning engagement, while autonomy need satisfaction has the weakest effectiveness. Further, the results demonstrate that peer learning group identification strengthens the effect of social interaction on psychological needs satisfaction. The study is among the first to specifically focus on exploring the mechanism how psychological needs satisfaction mediates the relationship between social interaction and learning engagement and has important managerial implications for MOOC platform design and operation in order to facilitate MOOC engagement.