Factors affecting use of massive open online courses by Ghanaian students

Abstract The study examined how the perceived level of students’ knowledge on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) influence its use. The study utilizes the use of Innovation Diffusion Theory and Technology Acceptance Model to examine factors that influence students use of MOOCs within the Ghanaian university. The data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. The data was analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM-Amos). The findings showed perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use MOOCs as well as perceived compatibility and observability positively affect students use of MOOCs systems. However, the perceived complexity of use negatively affects students use of MOOCs systems. The findings further validate students’ motive to use the MOOCs systems for learning. Students’ attitudes toward using MOOCs systems and behavioral intentions to use MOOCs systems are heavily influenced by technology and resource availability. When technology tools are available, students’ intents to use them in their studies.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Valentina Arkorful (PhD) is a lecturer at the College of Distance education and Maths/ICT department at the University of Cape Coast. She has published more articles on technology in education, instructional design, mobile learning, e-learning and information and communication technology. Kwaku Anhwere Barfi (PhD) is a Lecturer and a coordinator of the Information Literacy Unit at University of Cape Coast, Ghana. He has published more articles locally and internationally on technology in education, information science, e-learning, and information and communication technology. Nyinaku Odoi Baffour Jnr is graduate student at University of Cape Coast pursuing Master of Education in information technology. He has published articles on technology in education, mobile learning and e-learning.

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
The study utilizes the use of Innovation Diffusion Theory and Technology Acceptance Model to examine factors that influence students use of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) within a Ghanaian university. The data was analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM-Amos). The findings showed perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use MOOCs as well as perceived compatibility and observability positively affect students use of MOOCs systems. However, perceived complexity of use negatively affects students use of MOOCs systems. The findings further validate students' motive or intention to use the MOOCs systems for learning. This has the propensity to increases their academic performance in the universities. Students' attitudes toward using MOOCs systems and behavioral intentions to use MOOCs systems are heavily influenced by technology and resource availability.

Introduction
The growing spate of technology is increasingly changing the nature of all spheres of human lives. Technological advancement and its usage have increased industrial productions, hastened scientific discoveries, improved economic management and reduced time and cost of transportation (Jordan, 2014;Semenova & Rudakova, 2016). In addition to scientific, industrial production and economic management, one important area that technology is widely utilised is education (Adom et al., 2020;Budu et al., 2018). Technology is utilised and integrated in teaching and learning processes in traditional classroom setting, adopted in virtual studies and used for the facilitation of information search. Recently, through the growth of technology, researchers are advocating for changes in the traditional classroom teaching and learning to either semi complete virtual learning or a complete virtual study (Antwi-Boampong, 2018;Arkorful et al., 2021). It is for this reason that distance education has witnessed tremendous growth in recent times (Bervell & Arkorful, 2020). As the need for virtual, blended and distance online learning continues to gain popularity within the framework of educational establishment, different online educational platforms and tools have been created to aid online education. One of such online tools is the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is mostly used without any payment of admission and is available to all users over the world who are interested to enroll. It usually composes of forums quizzes assignments, videos and text-based instructional models online. According to Aders (2015), MOOC was first practiced in 2008. They created and taught the first online program which is considered today as MOOCs. The contribution of MOOCs studies cannot be overemphasized. For instance, technology service providers such as EdX and Coursera in partnership with trustworthy universities is free and open to students globally and permit all persons to register. Per this arrangement, beginners as well as progressive learners can take MOOCs courses (Sonwalkar & Maheshkar, 2015). Research scientists, school pupils, students in polytechnics and universities usually take part in MOOCs that show variety in motivation learning goals and styles. Additionally, MOOCs allow most institutions throughout the world to share their courses on open, online platforms like Coursera, EdX, Udacity, and Open2Study. Anyone who wishes to attend a university, such as the University of Michigan or the University of Minnesota, Southampton, can do so. The only requirement is that the person has to register with the platform. MOOCs' openness, which is characterized by the opportunity to enroll in any online course without completing an entrance exam, demonstrating a specific level of knowledge, or paying for it, allows academics to investigate MOOCs as a means of assuring equity in knowledge acquisition (Sonwalkar & Maheshkar, 2015).
In spite of the foregoing outlined issues, the use of MOOCs by many students especially in Africa is faced with myriad of challenges. This makes it difficult for students, lecturers, and other online learners who seeks to benefit from the various services provided by MOOCs. The situation is not different from Ghana. Some argue that internet connectivity in Ghana is quite low and hence reduce users (students and lectures) interest in the usage of MOOCs. The overriding presumption is that the availability of internet infrastructure predicts users' ability to complete a registered programme on any of the MOOC's platforms (Pozón-López et al., 2020). The implication from Pozón-López et al. (2020) and Zhang and Yuan (2016) study are that internet infrastructure has a significant relationship with the use of MOOCs platforms. However, although, studies have investigated the availability or otherwise of comprehensive infrastructure for the development of online learning in Ghana, there is no empirical evidence on the role of internet on the use of MOOCs in Ghana. The paper seeks to fill this gap through an adaptation of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT) to examine how internet infrastructure influence the use of MOOCs by university students.
Additionally, individual's knowledge level on a project determines how well the project becomes beneficial. Previous research indicates that, the percentage of people who are able to complete courses on MOOC keeps reducing. According to Jordan (2014) the two giants' leaders in MOOC platforms such as Coursera and EdX have an average completion rate of less than 13 percent of those who registered for the course prior to their start. A high dropout rate of between 66.09 and 92.93 was recorded for 79,186 students who enrolled in 39 courses in research conducted by Zhang and Yuan (2016) on the Chinese Xuetang X MOOC. The reason for dropout varies from person to person. It is argued that users understanding on the nature of these MOOCs platforms contributes significantly to their success. Therefore, if students have limited knowledge on the operations of these MOOCs platforms, it will have a negative effect on how they use it. Similarly, students perceived knowledge on various course on the MOOCs platforms serves as the basis for enrolment. Thus, uniformed students end up not completing their courses. There is therefore the need to examine how the perceived level of students' knowledge on MOOCs influence its use.

Theoretical perspective and hypothesis development
The study examines factors that influence students' use of MOOCs at a Ghanaian university utilizing the IDT and TAM. TAM hypotheses are a subset of perceived innovation traits, according to scholars, so combining these two models could result in a more robust model than either model alone. A previous study that combined the two hypotheses had excellent results (T. C. Hsu et al., 2014). As a result, this study employs the IDT and TAM.

Innovation diffusion theory
The work of Dillon and Morris' (1996) is the foundation for the IDT. These authors argue that innovations provide benefits that are perceived to be in line with practices such as complexity, potential liability, and observability. As a result, the current study uses various constructs from the theory to define factors that influence students' use of MOOCs. Some of these factors are discussed below: Perceived compatibility (PC): Perceived compatibility, according to Moore and Benbasat (1991) is the degree to which an observable MOOCs system is in line with current standards, requirements, and student experiences. In this study, perceived compatibility was defined as a student's belief that using a MOOCs system will increase their learning performance. Perceived compatibility has been used as a predictor of attitude toward using MOOCs systems and behavioral intention (El Said, 2017). It can de deduced that perceived compatibility can be a perceived friendly use of something, and favorably influences students' usage of MOOCs systems, as well as behavioral intention. Owing to this explanation, it is hypotheses that:

H 1 : Perceived compatibility significantly affect the use of MOOCS among Ghanaian university students
Following compatibility is the perceived complexity (CO): Complexity refers to the perceived amount of work required by end-users to comprehend inventions and their ease of use (Yang & Lee, 2021). As a result, complexity as a way in which a student perceives challenges in using MOOCs, which has an impact on their learning performance. According to Sharma's (2015), user's intention to use MOOCs decreases because perceived compatibility issues. Furthermore, empirical research revealed that the MOOCs system's complexity had a substantial unfavorable impact on users' attitudes toward it and their behavior plans for using it (Daniel et al., 2015). As a result of the perceived complexity of use, it may be deduced that the higher the complexity, the lower the student's intention to use or actual usage, and vice versa. Based on this, the second hypothesis in the study hypothetically states that:

H 2 : Complexity significantly affects the use of MOOCS among Ghanaian university students
Observability (OB): The level to which the results of the innovation are evident to others is referred to as observability (Sonwalkar & Maheshkar, 2015). Because most often, friends and neighbors enquire about innovation evaluation data, such visibility encourages group discussions of a unique idea. As a result, in this study, observability is defined as the extent to which a student's impression of MOOC system use effects their learning performance employing several methodologies and linking a diverse set of participants from various specialties. Observability has a positive impact on perceived ease of use and behavioral intention to use the MOOCs system (Ibrahim & Rahim, 2018).

Technology acceptance model (TAM)
The TAM describes how users accept new technologies in their daily activities. When users are able to willfully accept new technologies, it positively impacts the extent of enjoyment they derive from its usage. Thus, in this research, the TAM is adopted to examine perceived ease of use, and perceived usefulness as factors that affect the use of MOOCs among university students.
The Perceived ease of use (PEU) is defined as the extent to which a user believes that using a particular concept to achieve a goal will require little effort (Sharma, 2015). Therefore, perceived ease of use can be seen as the use of MOOCs to achieve performance of learning with ease. Thus, the current paper examines the relationship between the perceived ease of use of MOOCs in relation to Ghanaian university students. The paper therefore predicts that:

H 4 : Perceived ease of use has a significant effect on the use of MOOCs among Ghanaian university students
Perceived Usefulness (PU) is defined as the extent to which users' belief that putting a plan into action will improve a performance (Al-Rahmi et al., 2019). As a result, perceived usefulness in this study is defined as a student's belief that taking MOOCs will increase their learning performance. The perceived usefulness of MOOCs might have a considerable impact on users' intentions to use the platforms.

Intention to use
Intention to Use (IU) MOOCs refers to a person's propensity to utilize and continue to use a particular technology, as well as the factor that impacts how frequently they do so (Venkatesh et al., 2012). As a result, the attitudes of students toward using the MOOCs system, as well as their behavioral intention to use MOOCs for learning, were investigated in this study. Furthermore, in this paper, it is investigated to see if the utilization of MOOCs for active learning a critical component is in establishing technology-use models.
From the two theoretical propositions, it could be inferred that students use of MOOCs is affected by varied factor. From the definition of the intention to use, a person's willingness and quest to continue to use technology is mostly hinged on multiplicity of factors. While some of these factors could positively affect technology usage, others have the propensity to negatively affect use of the technology. The interrelationship between these factors and students use of MOOCs is presented in Figure 1.

Research methodology
Various universities encourage their students to frequently use MOOCs for learning to acquire educational laurels. For the purposes of this paper, attention was placed on students from the University of Cape Coast. University of Cape Coast was selected due to the number of people from different departments who are enrolled on various MOOCs platforms. To get proportional representation of participants from the University, multi-level sampling procedure was adopted. First, stratified sampling technique was used to group the university into colleges. In each college, purposive sampling was used to identify departments where students mostly use MOOCs. In these departments, simple random sampling was used select the students. The paper employed the use of questionnaires. These questionnaires were distributed to the students who have experimented with or used MOOCs. The sample chosen for the study consisted of MOOCs system users from both postgraduate and undergraduate students. The item survey was graded on a 5-point Likert scale. The respondents were given questionnaire to complete out in order to get their input on the MOOCs learning system and their desire or willingness of continuous usage. The data was analyzed using the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM-Amos) as the statistical technique in the study, which was done in two parts. The first phase was to design, converge, and differentiate the measurement validity, while the second was to analyze the model.

Distribution of participants and data collection
The total number of questionnaires given was 1000, with 950 returned by respondents, resulting in a 95.0 percent response rate. Manual analysis of the questionnaires was carried out. After the questionnaires were processed, it was determined that the majority of the participants were males, with the bulk of them in level 400. It was also discovered that majority had their specialization in the social sciences. Out of the total population, 96.8% were using MOOCs platforms. Analysis of the distribution is presented in Table 1.

Measurement and instrument
The questionnaire is divided into three sections. Part one of the questionnaire collected primary demographic data such as gender, age, educational level, and characteristics of specialization. The IDT, which encompassed complexity, observability, and perceived compatibility, was captured in the second component of the questionnaire, which contained 18 items and was adapted from prior studies (Moore & Benbasat, 1991). The final component of the questionnaire, which was based on Davis (1989) survey, had 29 questions of constructs, recorded the TAM model's perceived ease of use, perceived utility, and students' intention to continue using MOOCs system.

Results and analysis
The related factors with TAM and IDT affected students' use of MOOCs system and intention to use MOOCs platforms for learning by the Ghanaian university students with a Cronbach's Alpha reliability coefficient of 0.894.

Measurement model analysis
Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used in the study as the statistical method for analysing data. This was done in conjunction with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in AMOS 23. The model was done through unidimensionality, discriminant validity, reliability, convergent validity and goodness-of-fit as has already been indicated by Hair et al. (2012). From Table 2, the summary of the indices of goodness-of-fit and the various measurements in the model have been presented.

Validity and reliability of measures in the model
The results validity and reliability have been present in Table 3. The overall values of Composite Reliability (CR), Cronbach's Alpha (CA) and Average Variance Extracted (AVE), have been accepted; therefore, discriminant validity has also been established. Furthermore, the (CR) values obtained have been presented, and they range from 0.812 to 0.932. This exceeds the cut-off value of 0.70. The (CA) values which also ranges from 0.840 to 0.911 and is beyond the cut-off value of 0.70. Moreover, the (AVE) values ranged from 0.549 to 0.673. This also exceeds the required value of 0.50 or above. This is an indication that the entire validity and reliability results meet the threshold as suggested by Hair et al. (2012).

Structural model analysis
The results of the study have been presented using the MOOCs system. This result is compared throughout the hypothesis testing in the study. To test the provided hypotheses, the confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were used in the structural equation modelling (SEM). The outcomes of the hypotheses testing are presented in Table 4. The findings of this study confirm four of the hypotheses, which were consistent with the majority of previous studies that found that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of MOOCs positively affect students' propensity or desire for using MOOCs as a platform for learning. As a result, students' academic performance improves (Ibrahim & Rahim, 2018). Similarly, the findings in Table 4 shows that observability and perceived compatibility have a positive effect on students' intents and desire to use MOOCs. On the other hand, perceived complexity of use has a negative effect on student use of MOOCs.

Discussions and implications of the findings
The main aim of the research was to examine the factors that affect university students' usage of MOOCs as a platform for learning. Thus, the study merged IDT with TAM to discover the various factors that affect students use of MOOCs. This research was rather a new innovative effort in combining IDT and TAM to discover various factors that has significant relationship (either positive or negative) with students' usage of MOOCs. Based on the model proposed, the relationships between five factors were examine with students' intention to use the MOOCs platforms. On a general perspective, the outcomes confirmed the research model and the hypotheses. The outcomes of this research deliver an insight into the Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT). The outcome helped revealed that factors like the complexity, observability, and perceived compatibility, have a greater effect on students' attitude towards using MOOCs system and students' intention to use MOOCs system.
In addition to the IDT, the study examined some of the factors of TAM. Some of these factors were the perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness and their relationship on students' intention to using MOOCs systems. The findings from the research revealed that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use MOOCs, perceived compatibility and observability positively affected students use of MOOCs systems. However, perceived complexity of use negatively affects students use of MOOCs systems. From Table 3, the findings further demonstrate students' intention to use the MOOCs systems for learning. This has the propensity to increases their academic performance in the universities.
The results are consistent with previous research which have been conducted within the realm of MOOCS. These findings from these previous researchers also revealed that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, observability and perceived compatibility had significant positive effects students use of MOOCs Daniel et al., 2015;Ibrahim & Rahim, 2018). It can be assumed that before deciding to use MOOCs, students will determine through comprehensive evaluation whether the MOOCs will fit their study requirements or would be appropriate for their studies and their overall academic goal. Therefore, if the MOOCs platforms are able to suit the students study needs, the students may view the MOOCs schemes to be advantageous. Students, on the other hand, may regard MOOCs schemes to be more advantageous if they observe the MOOCs platforms to be superior to traditional teaching methods or other approaches Dolan, 2014). The implication then is that because systems have been introduced in various universities and students are already aware with them, their perceived usefulness and ease of use have a significant impact on students' intents to use.
From the results presented through statistical analyses, it could be observed that all hypotheses are supported except only one. The one is the complexity. Owing to the tenets of the IDT and the TAM, it is expected that users will ordinarily not be willing to use technology which is perceived to be complex. The complexity of the technology would be counterproductive to students desire to enhance their academic performance or achievement (J. Y. Hsu et al., 2018). Using the TAM which thrives on motivation and perceived ease of use, complexity is in direct contrast with ease of use. It is therefore noteworthy that for students to willingly use MOOCs systems, the system should demonstrate considerable level of ease of use in order to attract students.
The TAM illustrates that perceived usefulness of MOOCs and perceived complexity of use had a significant positive and direct impact on students' attitudes regarding MOOCs and their propensity to use the MOOCs programs. This assertion was the was the case in this study. This is because the findings demonstrates that where MOOCs system users believed that there is a higher perceived usefulness, their intentions to use the MOOCs systems or platforms also increase. This study also discovered that perceived compatibility of use had a positive effect on the use of MOOCs systems by students. These findings were similar to those of Venkatesh et al. (2003).
According to the findings from the study, students would be wary of MOOC programs if they feel that these MOOCs systems would be challenging and complicated to their studies and undermine their overall academic goals. Students are more likely to believe that MOOCs systems are simple to use if they believe that the MOOCs scheme would help them attain academic success. Furthermore, students who have the opportunity to try out MOOCs systems are more likely to consider the MOOCs system to be simpler to use. As a result, MOOC system developers should create schemes that are user-friendly and relevant to students' studies in order to boost the sense of ease of use. Administrators should provide official support to students who want to participate in MOOC programmes.
In conclusion, the system's findings show that MOOCs scheme developers, designers, and official procurers should assess the wants and values of scheme users and ensure that the scheme effectively meets those expectations. The user's desire to be found and the perceived congruence of scheme characteristics boost MOOC acceptability. Furthermore, qualities like as observability have a positive effect on the likelihood of using MOOCs (Moore & Benbasat, 1991). It also backs with prior findings for MOOCs systems (Al-Rahmi et al., 2015;Alamri et al., 2019;Allen & Seaman, 2014).
Furthermore, judgments made about other model components have a range of consequences. First and foremost, this research supports the widely held belief that acceptance hypotheses are significant. To be more exact, perceived MOOCs system ease of use influenced perceived MOOCs system usefulness, and both believing hypotheses were major drivers in MOOCs scheme acceptance. To optimize its utility as a MOOCs system, it should be perceived as both simple to use and beneficial. To make it easier for students to understand how to use technology, several departments should demonstrate how to use it and provide instructional tools. Furthermore, the findings advise that lecturers communicate how technology like the use of MOOCs systems will aid and benefit students in studying course content or attaining other learning goals. Students with a positive attitude toward using the MOOCs scheme and a greater behavioral intention to use the MOOCs scheme have a higher behavioral intention to use the MOOCs scheme.
In the educational environment, the study makes a significant theoretical contribution to prior IDT with TAM research . The following three practical implications are proposed based on the findings.
• To make good use of the MOOCs systems for learning, the system must be positioned in a way that will be able to motivate students to use the system and influence students' performance in higher education such as the universities. Furthermore, lecturers and supervisors can assist students by responding to inquiries and sharing knowledge with ease, thereby improving student learning collaboration and developing researchers' research skills.
• Instead of forcing students to use MOOCs, universities are urged to enroll students so that they can learn how to do so. Universities may combine all of the methods and instruments for employing MOOCs during this phase.
• Students' attitudes toward using MOOCs systems and behavioral intentions to use MOOCs systems are heavily influenced by technology and resource availability. When technology tools are available, students should take use of them because it will not only help them learn but also affect their performance.

Conclusion and suggestion for future works
The IDT and the TAM have been confirmed in the educational context, and this study has provided a deeper knowledge of students' possible perceptions of MOOCs systems. This research's contribution to the MOOC acceptance study was discussed. While the TAM's benefits were demonstrated, the findings of this study provided greater understandings of users' adoption and acceptance of MOOC systems. As a result, combining IDT and TAM models in a proposal could provide superior overall results. Similarly, the findings suggested that MOOC system developers, designers, and institutional procurers carefully examine students' needs and confirm that the chosen systems successfully match their needs. The five novel aspects of MOOCs systems may be important factors in user acceptance. Given these discrepancies, more research is needed to examine the relationship between perceived compatibility of using MOOCs systems and perceived usefulness.