1.1

The meaning of “Golden Course”

“Golden Course” is the most valuable in the word “gold”, which is a visual representation of high-quality classrooms such as advanced classrooms, dialogue classrooms, and open classrooms^1-4. Its characteristics include three aspects: the interacting between professors and students, emphasizing the process of education and teaching, and strict requirements for students^5-7. In contrast, there are low-quality classes such as low-level classes, indoctrination classes, and closed classes. It is characterized by loose classrooms, low course difficulty, and low interaction. In June 2018, the Ministry of Education officially proposed the concept of “Golden Course”. Subsequently, the Ministry of Education issued a corresponding document: Opinions on How to Improve Talent Cultivation Ability and Rapidly Build High-Level Undergraduate Education⁸. The document pointed out: contemporary college students should insist on studying hard and need to increase the burden reasonably. Higher education should improve the degree of academic challenge, difficulty and depth, raise the level of teaching quality. Since then, research related to the Golden Course has been triggered. After the joint efforts of numerous institutions and colleges across the nation, in November 2020, the Ministry of Education launched the first batch of first-level undergraduate courses with a total of 5,118 Golden Course, covering four directions: online mode, offline mode, hybrid mode, and virtual simulation mode.

1.2

The significance of the research

In recent years, China’s “Golden Course” research has had a profound impact on the high-quality development of higher education. Many scholars have proved the importance of the construction of Golden Course, but there are few articles that comprehensively analyze relevant research through quantitative analysis methods. The research results in recent years can be further mined by the method of data visualization. In addition, under the conditions of epidemic prevention and control, colleges and universities are forced to carry out online education. How to learn from relevant research results and improve the level of international education is an urgent problem that needs to be solved.

This paper employs the knowledge graph analysis method and visual means to present the knowledge structure, law, and research distribution of the Golden Course research. Through quantitative analysis of an abundance of papers, the research of Golden Course in China is systematically sorted out, and the development trajectory, research hotspots, and frontier directions of related fields are analyzed, and provide reference suggestions for creating future Golden Course and enhancing the level of higher education’s quality. Especially in the case of normalized epidemic prevention and control, most international students can only teach online. How to improve classroom education for international students is particularly important.

2.1

Data sources

The literature retrieved in this paper comes from CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure), the general online publishing database of Chinese academic journals. According to the targeted education field of “Golden Course”, the search conditions are set as subject = (“university” or “university”) AND “Golden Course”. The deadline for data retrieval is June 12, 2021. After reading and screening the retrieved literature, after removing irrelevant literature, a total of 1130 valid research papers in related fields were obtained.

2.2

Research methods

This paper uses CiteSpace software through the method of knowledge graph to quantitatively analyze the Golden Course related papers, from the aspects of annual publication volume trend and keyword analysis. By drawing trend graphs, clustering views, etc., using the node size, connection strength, and other elements of the view to clearly display the hotspots, and zone layout in the research field, so as to systematically sort out the research status of Golden Course in China, and analyze the development track, research hotspots and frontier directions of related fields.

3.1

Trend change

The research trend of a certain research field can be reflected by the annual distribution trend of the number of research documents. Figure 1 illustrates the annual distribution trend of the research papers related to the Golden Course. The solid line represents the actual number of research papers per year, and the dashed line represents the trend forecast of the number of research papers. The number of research papers in 2021 is as of June 12, 2021.

Figure 1.

The annual distribution trend of the research papers.

Since the concept of Golden Course was officially proposed in 2018, research in related fields has shown a trend of rapid growth as a whole. 2018 can be called the first year of Golden Course research. Since June 21, 2018, the Ministry of Education held several related meetings and released several related notices. This series of meetings and notices opened the prelude to the study of Golden Course, mobilized the whole society to think about how to reform classroom education in colleges and universities, created high-level Golden Course, and enhanced the level of education.

Since then, in 2019 and 2020, research on Golden Course has sprung up from 10 articles per year to 600 articles per year. This rapid development of research situations highlights the continuous in-depth and divergent thinking processes of relevant research by educators in the whole society, and related research has gradually expanded from conceptual and theoretical research to practical application exploration in multiple disciplines.

3.2

Keyword cluster analysis

In this paper, similar high-frequency keywords in the research field of “Golden Course” are appropriately combined and deleted to obtain a clustering map (Figure 2) through CiteSpace. From the cluster map analysis of keywords, the representative research hotspots in the Golden Course research field can be identified. A total of 8 cluster labels were generated through the cluster analysis of CiteSpace. The clustering results were reasonable. The eight cluster labels can be divided into three categories: the construction approach, evaluation criteria, and practical exploration of the “Golden Course”.

Figure 2.

Keyword clustering map.

Cluster labels such as Golden Course, talent training, and college students can be attributed to the construction approach of “Golden Course. The extracted cluster keywords include blended teaching, MOOC, flipped classroom, information teaching, Integration of production and education and so on. In order to increase the gold content of the classroom, squeeze out the moisture, and build a high-quality Golden Course. First, it is necessary to change the educational concept from the traditional teacher-oriented and teaching-oriented concept to the student-oriented teaching concept. As Li Zhiyi¹ pointed out, we should change from teaching students to teaching students to learn, and from teaching with ethics to teaching with learning. Secondly, the construction direction should be clarified, and the goal of Golden Course should be to build morality and cultivate people. The construction direction of 5 types of Golden Course such as virtual simulation and social practice is researched⁹. Based on this, colleges and universities can focus on making efforts to break through the barriers of traditional education. Thirdly, there should be specific construction methods that can realize intelligent education and improve classroom quality through high-tech means such as MOOCs, online and offline hybrid teaching, and virtual simulation, and with the help of Internet + education¹⁰. Finally, there should also be supporting means, which can be provided from five aspects, including policy, organization, mechanism, evaluation, and funding by establishing a teaching steering committee, issuing relevant guidance documents, standardizing professional certification of education quality, and increasing special funds for education. Safeguard measures to encourage the participation of all groups in society and to promote the construction of Golden Course to be widely carried out and take root in colleges and universities across the country.

Cluster labels such as standards, first-class courses, and teaching quality can be attributed to the evaluation criteria of Golden Course. Construction, student-centered, teaching model, etc. To guarantee the standard of curriculum teaching, there should be a complete evaluation system of Golden Course and the evaluation standards should be student-centered and aimed at promoting students’ development¹¹. It is necessary to improve the existing evaluation methods and make them inclined to the evaluation mechanisms such as the diversification of evaluation subjects, the diversification of evaluation elements, and output orientation, so that they pay more attention to the evaluation of cultivating students’ higher-order thinking abilities and the learning effects of students. By constructing a periodic, procedural, and diversified evaluation mechanism, a method that combines quantitative and qualitative data is adopted to comprehensively and comprehensively enhance the level of courses. For example, the tripartite evaluation mechanism of peers, supervisors, and students proposed by Chen Xiang et al.¹², and Guan Hong et al.¹³ proposed a method of evaluating courses through multiple dimensions such as course objectives, course content, course implementation, guidance team, resource support and course effects. Secondly, after a complete and scientific evaluation system, the evaluation results of the Golden Course can be used as the basic element of the evaluation of the double ten thousand plan and the double first-class plan¹⁴. Increasing the importance of Golden Course prompts universities to increase investment in the research of Golden Course.

Clustering labels such as practical teaching, undergraduate education, and new engineering can be attributed to the practical exploration of Golden Course, and the extracted cluster keywords include ideological and political theory courses, public security colleges, rain classroom, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, OBE, etc. The practical application of Golden Course mainly focuses on courses such as ideology, morality, innovation, and entrepreneurship, and has achieved rich research results. Xie Shoujun et al.¹⁵ elaborated on the standards and types of ideological courses; Feng Pei¹⁶ explored the construction elements of Golden Course in ideological courses, and pointed out that ideological and political theory courses should cultivate students’ Marxism thinking methods. The teaching method is based on teaching students the unity of knowledge, faith, behavior, and builds a teaching situation that students like. Wang Shi¹⁷ made a division of the path of the construction of Ideological Golden Courses in universities. Zhang Yafeng¹⁸ introduced the OBE education concept and elaborated on the construction ideas and effective paths of the innovation and entrepreneurship golden course from three dimensions: the top-level design of the innovation and entrepreneurship golden course, the curriculum system, and the evaluation mechanism. Practical exploration. Compared with other professional courses in the past, courses such as ideology and politics, and college students’ innovation and entrepreneurship were less valued and less interested in students. However, with the deepening of Golden Course research, students’ traditional understanding of these courses has been greatly changed. Blended teaching, immersive practice teaching, virtual simulation teaching and other methods enhance the interacting between professors and students, motivate the enthusiasm of students, and the teaching effect is obvious.