Creating a ‘choose your topic’ massive open online course: an innovative and flexible approach to delivering injury prevention education

Background A pediatric injury prevention course has not been available as a massive open online course (MOOC). Creating a comprehensive topic course is particularly challenging because the traditional, week-by-week linear curriculum design is often a barrier to learners interested in only specific topics. We created a novel, flexible course as both a ‘choose your topic’ MOOC for the public learner and a Small Private Online Course (SPOC) for medical students. Methods We describe creating ‘Injury Prevention for Children and Teens’, a course of 59 video learning segments within eight modules taught by a multidisciplinary panel of 25 nationally-recognized experts. Completion tracking and course evaluations were collected. Results In 2.5 years, 4,822 learners from 148 countries have enrolled. Two-thirds of learners were female. Median age of learners was 31 years. For engagement, 19.3% (n = 932) of learners attempted quizzes, and 5.2% (n = 252) participated in online forum discussions. Medical professionals (n = 162) claimed an average of 13 credit hours per learner. Over 200 senior medical students have taken the SPOC. Conclusion ‘Injury Prevention for Children and Teens’ is a novel approach to injury prevention education that is broad, science-based, accessible, and not cost-prohibitive for a diverse group of global learners