Antecedents of student MOOC revisit intention: Moderation effect of course difficulty

In response to the research gap in the current literature regarding the low student retention of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), this study uses task-technology fit theory to understand how MOOCs' technological factors in three dimensions (i.e., course vividness, teacher subject knowledge, and interactivity) influence students' revisiting of MOOCs. Going deeper, this study also takes course difficulty into consideration and investigates the interactive effects of course difficulty on the main factors identified above. The empirical results show that the vividness of course content, teacher subject knowledge, and MOOC interactivity can positively affect students' intention to revisit MOOCs. However, the relationships between the three dimensional factors and student intention to revisit are affected in different ways by course difficulty. Specifically, the findings show that course difficulty negatively moderates the relationship between course content vividness and students' intention to revisit, and positively moderates the relationship between teacher subject knowledge and students' intention to revisit. In addition, course difficulty typically does not have a significant influence on the relationship between technology interactivity and students' intention to revisit. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.