From online planning education to future planning education in a global view: A case study of online engineering education in MOOCs and its characteristics

The world is accelerating urbanization, planning plays an irreplaceable role in the urbanization processes and sustainable development, and its education, and planning education is for cultivating next-generation professionals in planning-related fields for improving planning activities in urbanization and ensuring better human settlements. With the advance of new technologies, the online planning education represented by MOOCs is rapidly developing nowadays, conventional planning education is gradually turning to online planning education. This study compares the data employed from the internet searched survey with the existing literature data, and focuses on the content characteristics of conventional planning education and online planning education by comparing the content structure, time characteristics, institution characteristics, and other elements. It is found that there is no essential difference between online planning education and conventional planning education in overall characteristics, therefore, the online planning education is considered the online version of conventional planning education. At the same time, online planning education exposes various shortcomings. Furthermore, this research proposes the theoretical concept of "future planning education," which suggesting a rational transformation for planning education is needed for solving the existing problems, and promoting the comprehensive efficiency of planning education.