Uncovering patterns and trends in online teaching and learning for STEM education

This article provides a bibliometric overview of publications on eLearning trends in STE(A)M teaching and learning to give readers a better understanding of the current state of research in the field. The main objective of this study is to provide bibliometric data on publications on online teaching and learning trends for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education (STEM) teaching and learning purposes printed in journals included in the Scopus database in the years 2011-2023. For the bibliometric analysis, STEM learning, STEM teaching, online education, bibliometric review keywords were used, and 136 documents from the Scopus database were chosen. The collected data of the publications scanned and published in the parameters of the study were subjected to a bibliometric analysis based on seven categories: number of articles and citations per year, most influential countries, most prolific author, most prominent affiliations, funding institutions, publication source, and subject areas. Network diagrams and bibliometric analyses were created using the Scopus database analysis. Most of the articles were published between 2016 and 2022. The United States of America, the United Kingdom, and China were among the top-three most productive countries, and the United States of America produced the most publications. The number of citations to publications indexed in the Scopus database is growing steadily and reached its peak in 2022 (178 citations). The most prolific author on this subject is Minichiello, A., with four publications. In addition, Stanford University and Utah State University have maximum publishing partners. By funding 16 publications for online STEM teaching and learning, the National Science Foundation has shown leadership. The topic areas of the publications’ distribution were looked at. The articles’ respective fields of study were social sciences and computer science. This study offers a vision for future research as well as a worldwide view of online learning for STEM teaching and learning.