Global Use, Adaptation, and Sharing of Massive Open Online Courses for Emergency Health on the OpenWHO Platform: Survey Study

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the global need for accessible content to rapidly train health care workers during health emergencies. The massive open access online course (MOOC) format is a broadly embraced strategy for widespread dissemination of trainings. Yet, barriers associated with technology access, language, and cultural context limit the use of MOOCs, particularly in lower-resource communities. There is tremendous potential for MOOC developers to increase the global scale and contextualization of learning; however, at present, few studies examine the adaptation and sharing of health MOOCs to address these challenges.

Objective: The World Health Organization's Health Emergencies Programme Learning and Capacity Development Unit and the Stanford Center for Health Education collaborated to survey learners from 4 emergency health MOOCs on the OpenWHO platform to examine differences in course use by World Bank country income classification across three dimensions: (1) how health education MOOCs are used and shared, (2) how health workers adapt MOOC content to meet local training and information needs, and (3) how content adaptations help frontline health workers overcome barriers to using MOOCs.

Methods: This study draws upon two sources of data: (1) course enrollment data collected from the 4 emergency health MOOCs (N=96,395) and (2) survey data collected from learners who participated in at least 1 of the 4 MOOCs (N=926). Descriptive statistics are used to summarize learner characteristics. Differences in enrollment, sharing, and adaptation by country income classification are examined using Pearson chi-square test.

Results: Of the enrollees who indicated their country of residence, half were from lower-middle-income countries (LMICs; 43,168/85,882, 50%) and another 9% (7146/85,882) from low-income countries. The majority of all respondents shared content (819/926, 88%) and used content in official trainings (563/926, 61%). Respondents were more likely to share and use content for trainings in LMICs than in high-income countries (91% vs 81%; P=.001). Learners in LMICs also shared content with more people on average compared with high-income country learners although the difference is not statistically significant (9.48 vs 6.73 people; P=.084). Compared with learners in high-income countries, learners in LMICs were more likely to adapt materials to distribute via offline formats or technologies, such as WhatsApp or text message (31% vs 8%; P<.001); to address cultural, linguistic, or other contextual needs (20% vs 12%; P=.076); and to meet local guidelines (20% vs 9%; P=.010). Learners in LMICs indicated greater accessibility challenges due to technological and linguistic barriers.

Conclusions: Learners commonly share content from MOOCs about public health emergencies; this is especially true in low-income countries and LMICs. However, content is often adapted and shared via alternative formats. Our findings identify a critical opportunity to improve MOOC design and dramatically scale the impact of MOOCs to better meet diverse global needs.

Keywords: COVID-19; MOOCs; digital health; global health education; health emergencies; health worker training; online learning; outbreak.