大規模開放式線上課程之定價與多元化策略

Pricing and Diversification of Massive Open Online Course Platforms

李維哲(Wei-Che Lee)

指導教授 ： 孔令傑

國立臺灣大學/管理學院/資訊管理學研究所/碩士(2017年)

https://doi.org/10.6342/NTU201702237

摘要

近年來大規模開放式線上課程（MOOCs）在高等教育領域受到極大的關注。 此類型的平台在這幾年如雨後春筍般的蓬勃發展，提供全球各所知名大學傳授高品質學習內容至世界各地。然而，平台的生存必須確保其財務的持續性，故其定價策略值得我們探討。我們好奇定價策略是否會損害課程的多樣性，例如：證書購買率較低的課程是否會被排擠而消失。因此，我們採用賽局理論來研究平台之定價策略，探討學習者和大學之間的互動和策略選擇。大學會考慮競爭強度，並根據證書價格和平台決定之證書收入分潤比例，決定課程品質以吸引學習者。
在本篇研究中，我們發現，無論是高證書購買率或是低證書購買率之課程，在平台發展的整個生命週期中，無論平台發展成熟度和大學之間競爭強度如何，都將會存在，而其中一個原因是因為平台為了獲取收益會給予大學足夠誘因開設所有類型的課程。我們還發現，當大學之間發生競爭時，高品質課程的數量會隨著平台發展成熟度的上升先增後降，這是因為當平台發展進入成熟期時，其中一所大學會因為競爭過度激烈而沒有誘因提供高品質的課程。我們還發現，大學的製課成本和聲譽的差異將導致不同類型的課程的高品質課程數量出現落差。我們還探討學習者時間有限的狀況之大學的最佳策略選擇，並且發現如果低證書購買率課程的支付意願與高證書購買率課程的支付意願夠接近，能減輕不同課程類型之間的競爭造成的損失，增加大學在平台上開設高品質的課程的誘因。

關鍵字

大規模開放式線上課程 ； 定價策略 ； 多元化 ； 多邊平台 ； 賽局理論

並列摘要

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have recently received a great deal of attention in higher education. MOOCs demonstrate universities’ efforts in offering high-quality digital learning materials to everyone in the world, which should be encouraged. Nevertheless, as a MOOC platform must ensure its financial sustainability, it is questionable whether a platform’s profit-seeking pricing strategy will hurt the diversity of courses, such as eliminating courses with low certificate purchasing rates. To address this question, we adopt a game-theoretic framework to model the interaction and strategic choices of a MOOC platform, learners, and universities. Based on the certificate prices and revenue sharing ratios chosen by the platform for courses with various certificate purchasing rates, universities consider the competition intensity and decide their course quality levels to attract learners.
We conclude that all types of course in terms of certificate purchasing rates will exist in equilibrium throughout the lifecycle of a MOOC platform, regardless of the technology maturity and competition intensity. We also find that the number of excellent courses first increases then decreases in technology maturity when there is competition among universities. This is because the intense competition in the mature period makes one of the universities find herself suboptimal to offer an excellent course. We also find that the difference in effort level and reputation between different course types on the platform will lead to the gaps of equilibrium quality level among different types of courses. We also investigate the presence of busy learners and observe that a large willingness-to-pay of low-conversion-rate courses can somehow alleviates the disadvantages of competition between different course types brought by the presence of busy learners.

並列關鍵字

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) ； Pricing ； Diversification ； Multi-sided Platforms ； Game Theory

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