Massive open online courses: learning opportunities about global health for Latin American countries

Abstract

Introduction: Massive open online courses provide the opportunity to train health professionals and researchers from Latin America in global health.

Objetives: To determine the global offer of massive open online courses in global health and the characteristics of their content.

Material and methods: We examined massive open online course platforms to compile the global health offerings. The search had no time restriction and was last conducted in November, 2021. The search strategy only included the descriptor “global health”. We obtained the characteristics of the courses, their content, and the global health domain covered. These data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, reporting absolute and relative frequencies.

Results: Our search strategy identified 4,724 massive open online courses. Of these, only 92 were related to global health. Most of these courses (n=44; 47.8%) were offered through Coursera. More than half (n=50; 54.4%) of the MOOCs were conducted by U.S.A. institutions and in English language (n=90; 97.8%). Most courses focused on “globalization of health and healthcare” (n=24; 26.1%), followed by the domains “capacity building” (n=16; 17.4%), “global burden of disease” and “social and environmental determinants of health” (n=15; 16.3%).

Conclusions: We found a high offer of massive open online courses on global health. These courses covered the global health competencies required for health professionals.