Finally, 534 valid questionnaires were accepted.
Situation and assessments of using OAs
When asked “Which types of OAs did you subscribe to?”, most students subscribed to OAs about academic and popular science. In preventive medicine, 79.5% of students subscribed to those OAs. In hygienic analysis and detection, the percentage was 65.8%, and in biostatistics the percentage was 77.2% (Fig. 1).
For the question “Is there any OA related to your major or courses?”, 94.4% of students majoring in preventive medicine answered “Yes”, 85.5% of students majoring in hygienic analysis and detection answered “Yes”, and 73.7% of students majoring in biostatistics also answered “Yes”. There was a significant difference on these three groups, and the proportion of preventive medicine was higher than other two majors (χ2 = 28.49, P < 0.01) (Table 1).
Among students majoring in preventive medicine, 80.5% of students spent less than 10 minutes or between 10 minutes and 30 minutes browsing OA articles every day. Among students majoring in hygienic analysis and detection, 77.6% of students did the same thing. Among students majoring in biostatistics, 82.5% of students also spent less than 10 minutes or between 10 minutes and 30 minutes browsing OA articles (Table 1).
After analyzing the results “What kind of OA articles do you like best?”, it could be concluded that most answers concentrated on “multi-picture and short articles”. Among students majoring in preventive medicine, 42.8% of them chosen “multi-picture and short articles”. Among students majoring in hygienic analysis and detection, 38.2% of them chosen it. Among students majoring in biostatistics, it was chosen by 38.2% of students (Fig. 2).
Situation and assessments of using micro-courses
As for the question “How often do you use micro-courses?”, in preventive medicine, 59.4% of students used micro-courses. In hygienic analysis and detection, 62.2% of students used micro-courses. In biostatistics, the percentage was 79.7%. Using frequency of micro-courses in biostatistics was significantly higher than that in preventive medicine and hygienic analysis and detection (χ2 = 16.68, P < 0.01) (Table 1).
Additionally, through analyzing the results of “What do you think are the disadvantages of current micro-courses? (multiple choices)”, we could find in preventive medicine, 19.6% of students chosen “Low quality of contents”, more than half of them chosen “Lack of interactions between teachers and students”, 39.3% of students chosen “Cumbersome using process”, 54.7% of students chosen “No concentrated time for micro-courses”, and only 11.8% students chosen “Unreasonable performance evaluations”. At the same time, in hygienic analysis and detection, 20.5% of students chosen “Low quality of contents”, 53.8% of students chosen “Lack of interactions between teachers and students”, 43.6% of students chosen “Cumbersome using process”, 73.1% of students chosen “No concentrated time for micro-courses”, and 11.5% of students chosen “Unreasonable performance evaluation”. Among the students majoring in biostatistics, 18.6% of students chosen “Low quality of contents”, 52.5% of students chosen “Lack of interactions between teachers and students”, 33.9% of students chosen “Cumbersome using process”, 59.3% of students chosen “No concentrated time for micro-courses”, and 20.3% of students chosen “Unreasonable performance evaluation” (Fig. 3).