International Journal of
Information and Education Technology

Abstract

In this paper, we argue that, success and failures in online learning is mostly depending on personal factors rather than factors influenced by the surroundings or the external environment. Students’ individual behavior plays an important role in learning. However, this may not be the case in classroom-based learning or time-tested traditional practices of learning, where multiple students learn together, as well as teachers influence the underperforming students to perform better. In this paper, we explore comparisons between learner behavior in hierarchical individual mode or traditional classroom learning and in online courses such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). MOOC learning belongs to the distributed individual mode of learning. The study is based on analyzing the learner’s interests and understanding within such modes. The information is gathered based on results available since the introduction of MOOC from the reputed universities in the world and on the general opinions derived from perspectives of MOOC learners.