A group of 65 university online students from 11 countries examined a wide variety of plants used in traditional Chinese herbal medicine yesterday at Shanghai Jiao Tong University's botanical garden.

They touched and smelled herbs while associate professor Liu Zhong explained how they are used to help people.

The session was part of the English version of the university's Traditional Chinese Medicine and Chinese Culture course, which went online in March on the website of the CNMOOC (www.cnmooc.org), the leading Massive Open Online Course platform in China. It has attracted about 150 international students.