ABSTRACT
Objective To analyze the hot research spots of MOOC research of higher medical edu-cation in China. Methods We searched the database of China National Knowledge Infrastrucure (CNKI), VIP database of Chinese journal (VIP), Wanfang Database for published studies on MOOC research of higher medical education from 2005 to April 2015. The high frequency words were counted by an analysis program-Bibliographic Item Co-occurrence Matrix Builder (BICOMB). According to the ranking word frequency threshold formula by Donohue, we collected the high-frequency keywords. The corresponding co-word ma-trixes were constructed by Bibexcel, then the data was input into SPSS 19.0 software for hierarchical clus-tering analysis. Results Finally 2 459 articles were included. 11 177 keywords and 13 high frequency words (the number of the real selected was 24) were taken into account. The keywords “stanford” clus-tered with “education module”, “online education”, “online courses”, “distance education”, “learning pro-cess”, “self-regulated learning”, “information technology”, “classroom teaching”. The keywords “network course” clustered with “teaching design”. The keywords “online learning” clustered with itself. The key-words “challenge” clustered with “colleges and universities”. The keywords “flipped classroom” clustered with“micro-lecture”,“MOOC”,“higher education”, “library”, “teaching module”, “teaching reform”, “big data”,“open education”. The keywords“SPOC”clustered with itself. Conclusion The research of MOOC research of higher medical education in our country has formed the basic characteristics with six hot spots involving teaching design, the model of online learning, dispassion thinking, teaching reform, and develop-ment. And there are many potential areas.