Massive Online Courses Win Over Indonesian Teachers, but Support Lags Behind

Indonesia’s sprawling archipelago has long made it difficult to deliver traditional teacher training to every corner of the country, and massive open online courses, or MOOCs, have been promoted as a scalable answer. A new study drawing on responses from 2,531 Indonesian in-service teachers now offers one of the largest snapshots to date of how these educators actually perceive MOOC-based professional development. The verdict is broadly encouraging but far from simple: teachers rate the courses highly as sources of teaching resources and pedagogical knowledge, yet they give the lowest scores of all to the institutional support they receive, and they report that workload remains a stubborn barrier even within flexible online formats.

The research, conducted by a team at Universitas Negeri Semarang and published in Discover Education, recruited participants through e-Guru.id, an Indonesian online professional learning network that offers webinars, memberships, and specialized training. All respondents had completed at least one MOOC related to professional development. The sample was predominantly female, with 1,665 women and 866 men, and professionally seasoned: nearly 78 percent were aged 35 or older, and almost 57 percent had at least 15 years of classroom experience. Notably, despite that deep experience, most were newcomers to MOOC learning, with 82.3 percent reporting zero to two years of MOOC use. The authors caution that because recruitment relied on a digitally connected professional network, the sample should not be treated as nationally representative of all Indonesian teachers.

Methodologically, the study is a cross-sectional survey designed to describe and explore rather than to test causal claims. Each of three conceptual domains was measured with five items on a four-point Likert scale, a format chosen to push participants toward a directional response rather than a neutral midpoint. The three domains were Perceived MOOC Effectiveness, covering instructional value, relevance, and professional usefulness; Perceived Professional Competence and Confidence, covering motivation and the perceived ability to apply new knowledge; and Perceived Opportunities and Challenges, covering scheduling flexibility, collaboration, effort, institutional support, and workload. Before any group comparisons, the team validated the instrument with confirmatory factor analysis using IBM SPSS Amos, and the three-factor model showed excellent fit, with a Comparative Fit Index of 0.972, a Tucker-Lewis Index of 0.967, and a Root Mean Square Error of Approximation of 0.057.

The statistical machinery behind the subgroup comparisons deserves attention because it reflects a growing standard of rigor in educational research. Rather than relying on classical analysis of variance, the team used Welch’s independent-samples t-tests and Welch’s one-way ANOVAs, which do not assume equal variances and are better suited to the substantially unequal group sizes in the sample. Because 15 item-level comparisons were run for each demographic variable, the researchers applied Benjamini-Hochberg false discovery rate corrections within each family of tests, and they followed significant omnibus results with Games-Howell post hoc tests. Effect sizes were reported as Cohen’s d for gender comparisons and as eta squared and omega squared for the ANOVAs. Of 75 item-level comparisons across five grouping variables, only three survived correction, a result the authors interpret as evidence of greater similarity than difference across teacher groups.

The descriptive findings tell a coherent story about what teachers value. Within the effectiveness domain, item means ranged from 3.42 to 3.64 on the four-point scale, with the highest rating going to the statement that MOOCs provide valuable resources and materials for improving teaching practice. Close behind were items on the contribution of MOOCs to understanding pedagogical strategies and instructional design, the relevance of content to classroom teaching, and usefulness for professional growth. The lowest item in the domain, though still positive, concerned perceived benefits for student learning, suggesting that teachers were more confident identifying immediate professional gains for themselves than attributing changes in student outcomes to their course participation. The authors stress that student outcomes were not measured independently, so this item reflects perception rather than demonstrated achievement gains.

The competence and confidence results reveal a subtle but important gap. Teachers rated their motivation to teach and share knowledge after MOOC participation highest, at a mean of 3.56, followed closely by perceived improvement in teaching skills. But confidence in applying MOOC-acquired knowledge in practice and in integrating technology into classroom teaching scored slightly lower, at 3.46 and 3.45 respectively. The authors argue this distinction separates professional learning acquisition from professional learning transfer: teachers may absorb knowledge and feel motivated, yet still struggle to translate that knowledge into technology-supported classroom practice. Because the data are self-reported and cross-sectional, the findings capture perceptions of capability rather than independently verified changes in instructional performance.

The opportunities-and-challenges domain produced the most differentiated pattern and the study’s most striking single result. Teachers rated opportunities to collaborate with colleagues across Indonesia highly, at a mean of 3.50, and valued the flexibility of MOOCs amid busy schedules at 3.45. Yet the item measuring difficulty completing MOOCs because of workload or other commitments scored an identical 3.45, and the effort required to keep up with course content scored 3.39. Flexibility, in other words, did not eliminate the demands of participation; it reorganized them. The lowest mean across the entire survey went to institutional support, at just 3.03, with a large standard deviation of 0.92 indicating wide variation in teachers’ experiences of organizational backing. The authors suggest that many participants may not have experienced MOOC learning as embedded within school-level professional development structures.

The subgroup analysis dismantles several common assumptions about who benefits from online professional learning. After false discovery rate correction, age, educational attainment, and teaching experience showed no robust differences on any of the 15 items, challenging narratives that frame digital learning through generational or qualification-based divides. Only two small gender differences survived correction: male teachers reported slightly higher perceived scheduling flexibility and slightly stronger institutional support, with Cohen’s d values of just -0.12 and -0.13. A nominal gender gap in technology-integration confidence vanished after adjustment. The one substantive pattern involved duration of MOOC use: teachers with more than six years of experience rated content relevance significantly higher than newer users, though the omnibus effect was small, explaining less than 1 percent of variance, and the longest-duration group contained only 74 participants. The authors note that causality cannot be inferred; sustained participants may find courses more relevant, or prolonged engagement may sharpen their ability to identify relevant content.

What emerges is a socio-technical picture in which MOOCs are not standalone solutions but components of broader professional learning ecosystems. The authors argue that access to online courses does not automatically become meaningful professional growth, and that knowledge acquired through MOOCs requires opportunities for experimentation, reflection, feedback, and institutional support before it becomes classroom practice. The coexistence of high flexibility ratings with high workload ratings exposes what they call a common misconception: that accessibility translates into ease of participation. For working teachers, flexible delivery shifts rather than removes the burden of allocating time, sustaining motivation, and balancing coursework against teaching and administrative duties. Barriers, they conclude, are organizational and temporal as much as technological.

The practical implications point away from demographic targeting and toward the conditions surrounding participation. The authors recommend designing relevant, practice-oriented content, reducing unnecessary workload, fostering collaborative learning communities, and embedding MOOCs within school-based professional development structures that provide recognition, mentoring, and protected time. They are careful to frame these as priorities for program development whose effects require direct evaluation, not proven interventions. The study’s limitations, including its cross-sectional design, self-reported data, and convenience sampling, restrict causal interpretation and generalizability. Future research, the team suggests, should employ longitudinal, mixed-method, and performance-based designs to examine whether MOOC participation actually changes instructional practice, how perceptions evolve over time, and which institutional conditions sustain engagement. For now, the message for education systems betting on MOOCs at scale is clear: teachers are ready and willing, but the surrounding ecosystem must catch up.

Subject of Research: Indonesian teachers' perceptions of massive open online courses for continuing professional development

Article Title: Indonesian teachers’ perceptions of MOOCs for digital professional development

Article References: Iqdami, M. N., Haryono, Astuti, T., & Widhanarto, G. P. (2026). Indonesian teachers’ perceptions of MOOCs for digital professional development. Discover Education, 5(1), Article 1080. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-02170-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44217-026-02170-w

Keywords: MOOCs, teacher professional development, Indonesia, online learning, continuing professional development, survey research, institutional support, workload, teacher perceptions, digital learning, Discover Education, statistical analysis