ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Education and Promotion
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1569881
This article is part of the Research TopicInnovative Teaching and Learning in Health Education and PromotionView all 34 articles
MOOC Construction for Life Education in Chinese Universities: An Analytical Study
Provisionally accepted
- Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China
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Background: With the advancement of the Chinese "Internet Plus" paradigm, life education has expended through the implementation of Massive open online courses (MOOCs). However, limited research has focused on the present condition and attributes of the building of Chinese life education MOOCs. Objectives: To systematically analyse the current status and attributes of life education MOOCs in China, assess the quality of the courses, and give a reference for the development of life education MOOCs in the country. Methods: We select China's online education platform and utilize the search terms "Health OR Life OR Death OR Psychology OR Nutrition OR Exercise OR well-being OR Love OR Ethics" to identify MOOCs pertinent to life education. Analyse and summarize the courses about platforms, schools, regions, objectives, contents, assessments, credit hours, number of sessions and number of learners. The quality of the course was assessed utilizing Quality Matters (QM). Results: In China, 129 life education MOOCs were provided in six online education platforms. The quantity of courses originating from double first-class universities, general universities and higher vocational universities was 44, 40, and 45, respectively. The quantity of courses from eastern regions was 106, while from western regions it was 23. The course contents covered three domains: life education, death education, and life value education. Credit hours, course sessions and the number of course learners exhibit statistically significant differences among regions and school types (P < 0.05). 47.3% of the QM scores were 60%-84%, indicating subpar overall course quality. 19 life education MOOCs were provided in foreign platforms Coursera and edX , with 52.6% having course duration of less than 16 hours and 47.4% catering to over 100,000 participants. Conclusion: Chinese life education MOOC is resource-rich and has a substantial learner base. However, issues persist, including inconsistent course quality, limited personalization of course content, and significant disparities between eastern and western regions. In the future, Chinese life education MOOC should align with the development in AI technology, address the disparities between Eastern and Western areas, and integrate with worldwide platforms.
Keywords: Life education, MOOC, online courses, curriculum development, quality assessment
Received: 02 Feb 2025; Accepted: 18 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Xu, Mou, Zhou and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Shaoyu Mou, Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China
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