Massive Open Online Course Provider Brings Medical Training to Thousands

A massive open online course (MOOC) provider has gained the attention of the EMS industry after providing training last spring on cardiac arrest resuscitation science.

“I completed the course with tens of thousands of other students from around the world,” says online EMS education expert Greg Friese. As co-host of the EMSEduCast, Friese interviewed the course instructor, Dr. Ben Abella, in December about his experience teaching through Coursera and current research in cardiac arrest resuscitation.

Dr. Abella is an assistant professor of emergency medicine and the clinical research director of the Center for Resuscitation Science at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania.

In his EduCast, Abella says he had never heard of this form of teaching until he was approached by the university to prepare a course for Coursera.

“This was the first time I had heard of MOOCs,” he says. “I thought wow, what a fantastic opportunity to teach a large group of people about the thing I’m most passionate about, which is cardiac arrest resuscitation.”

The concept behind MOOCs is to bring world-class education to the masses by making it available to anyone, anywhere, for free or at a low cost. While Coursera’s classes are free, some include the option to purchase a verified certificate of completion. Assignments are graded by multiple fellow students.

“The broad appeal is part of the secret sauce,” Abella says. “The broader your course, the more people can join and you have more of an impact.” He says there hadn’t previously been a course like this for the general public and medical public that explained the “whys” of CPR and the science of cardiac arrest and resuscitation.  “I thought I could really make an impact with this,” he says.

Abella put together a “survey course” titled Cardiac Arrest, Hypothermia, and Resuscitation Science. The course consisted of video lectures and demonstrations that he prepared with the assistance of the university, along with quizzes and chatroom discussions.

“It’s really remarkable, I had no idea what to expect–approximately 45,000 people enrolled for the course, and an appreciable number completed it,” he says. “The other remarkable thing about it was the international scope of it.” He says participants joined from countries around the world including Greece, Finland, Cameroon and Singapore.

Abella says what makes the format so powerful is the online chatroom where participants can interact with each other and ask for additional information. “These threads were really remarkable,” he says. They were set up in multiple languages and led to multiple Facebook study groups and real-world study groups at libraries and restaurants. “There was a beehive of activity that spontaneously occurred,” he says.

Abella says he allowed himself to get extremely involved, though as with any university course, the participation level of the professor can vary.

“For the month of the course I just spent tons of time on these discussion threads; I couldn’t peel myself away,” he says.

He spent at least several hours per day on emails, threads and monitoring course content. Every day he received 50-100 emails related to course content, he says, and had to have a student help manage his messages.

Though he could have been less involved, “This was a first-of-its-kind course and I wanted to make sure I got it right,” he says.

Abella adds that one of the things he finds exciting about online education is that traditional rules get broken, such as length of class time. Is 45 minutes to an hour really the best length of time, or should lectures be shorter and more digestible, as in his course?

“Not only do they break down a lot of conventions… but by virtue of being so open and free or inexpensive, an incredibly broad audience can access them,” Abella says. “They sort of level the playing field in an exciting way.” He notes there’s some controversy and fear about what this represents, including issues of job security for institutions and professors, if just one can teach the whole world. “It’s a complex area and there are varying opinions.”

Abella says he accumulated some incredible stories after the course, including one from a student in Europe who works as a security guard and had never previously learned about CPR. About a month after the course, someone collapsed in the building where the student works. “Your course helped me save a life,” Abella was told. “As an educator, what more do you want in life? That was one of many such stories… There’s a real exciting and untapped future for medical education.”

During the interview Dr. Abella hints at a possible second offering of the course sometime in 2014. Those interested can be added to a "watch list" to receive an update when the course is scheduled. 

To hear the full interview with Dr. Abella listen to the EMSEduCast.

With more than 400 courses in 20 categories, created by 85 Universities from 16 countries, Coursera has additional courses with topics relevant to EMS. Each one has an intro video available for viewing. 

Course listings include:

From the University of Pittsburgh: Disaster Preparedness

“…Disasters, by definition, overwhelm all available resources. If all available resources are gone, only one thing will keep a person alive and that is their attitude. A persons awareness and attitude, the two are closely linked, allow a person the means to remain calm, avoid panic, and draw upon resources within and outside the person to survive when their world has failed. In truth not everyone survives in extreme circumstances; people die, but, even in death, attitude, if it cannot save you, provides some degree or comfort.”

From the University of California, San Francisco: Poisonings in the Home and Community: Assessment and Emergency Response

“This is a survey course on the principles of Clinical Toxicology. The emphasis will be pre-hospital and emergency hospital management of poisonings with a case-oriented lecture format. The topics are prioritized by prevalence of human poisoning, natural and synthetic toxins, and target organ effects.”

From the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing: The Science of Safety in Healthcare

“This course will introduce the basic principles of the science of safety in healthcare. Course content will be of relevance to members of the healthcare delivery team, including nurses, as well as the healthcare consumers in the general public.”

Additional topics from various universities include: global health; human trafficking; mental health; Health Informatics in the Cloud; Healthcare Innovation and Entrepreneurship; Health Policy and the Affordable Care Act and Interprofessional Healthcare Informatics. Browse the full course listing at coursera.org/courses.