Massive open online course (MOOC) in Dentistry: a cross-sectional study of a UNASUS course on
Oral Health Care for Pregnant and Postpartum Women (Preprint)
Authors: Huanca Camila , Garrido Deise , Bavaresco Caren , Oliveira Ana Emilia , Haddad Ana Estela 
Published: January 2020

BACKGROUND

The technology-mediated education has been increasingly used in the global scope of continuous education. In the health area, it has been applied for professional development. In Brazil, the Ministry of Health created, as of 2010, the Open University of the Brazilian Public Health System (UNASUS), starting to promote the continuous education of the health teams, by means of a network of public universities, making an open access educational repository, with a wide range of course offers. Considering that, as of 2016, the Ministry of Health included the dental visit in the prenatal care of the pregnant women being followed-up. The SUS’ Open University-Federal University of Maranhão (UNASUS-UFMA), in partnership with the Faculty of Dentistry of the University of São Paulo (FOUSP), developed and launched the “Oral Health Care for Pregnant and Postpartum Women” course in the massive open online course (MOOC) format.

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this study is to present a descriptive analysis, resulting from the offer of such course, considering its program content, the participants’ profile, their development and the observed dropout rate.

METHODS

The MOOC on “Oral Health Care for Pregnant and Postpartum Women” designed to support dental surgeons and Dentistry students, as well as other health professionals. Educational objectives, target public, program content, workload were established and it counted with a development multidisciplinary team, including content developers expert on the subject, educators, professionals specialized in instructional design and information technology professionals. The course open for a 6-month period was presented in two units. At the end of the course, an evaluation activity with a cut-off grade of 70% for certification was available to the participants. For this study, the data collected in the Arouca platform and in the Moodle virtual learning environment from the period of April 10th to October 10th, 2018 was analyzed evaluating the students of the course.

RESULTS

The registrations reached the number of 15,461 people and, of these, 11,854 participants interacted with the course by accessing the multimedia book and 4,683 (30.30%) received the certificate of completion. Most of the participants (79,30%) were female and from a broad age group, from 21 to 40 years old. All the Brazilian federation units had registrants 5,434 registrations were from the Southeast region. 70.33% or the enrolled individuals were dental surgeons and 11.38%, classified as others, included Dentistry students, and there were also other health professionals registered. The completion rate was higher than the average of courses in the MOOC fashion registered in the literature.

CONCLUSIONS

The analyzed data indicated the wide capillarity of the offered course, overcoming geographic distance, and even connectivity, barriers given the technology and innovative delivery model, based on mobile technology.