Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in Higher Education: A Bibliometric Analysis (2012-2022)

Abstract

Nowadays, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have become an increasingly popular online learning environment. However, existing studies did not offer comprehensive findings and deeper exploration of MOOCs. This study presents a bibliometric review of 3201 studies up to 2022 from the Scopus database. Although the first study was conducted in 2012, most of the studies were published in 2021. The literature on MOOCs is growing significantly and this pattern is expected to increase in 2022 and beyond. The most cited documents were written by Liyanagunawardena et al., Jordan, and Hew and Cheung. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series is the most relevant publishing venue, followed by Lecture Notes in Computer Science and CEUR Workshop Proceedings. The Open University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia are playing important roles in MOOC studies. Besides China, which significantly outperforms other countries, the US and UK dominate in the field. Concerning the most active authors, D. Andone and D. Burgos stand out in MOOCs literature. The most frequent keywords are “MOOC”, “MOOCs”, “Higher Education”, “E-learning”, and “Massive Open Online Courses”. This study maps the scientific production regarding MOOCs, which will be useful for future collaborations and provide a framework for future studies.