Trend of distance education research in the covid-19 period: A bibliometric and content analysis

Abstract

The study aims to reveal the studies' profile for distance education activities in the Covid-19 period. For this purpose, bibliometric analysis and content analysis were used together in the study. Within the scope of the study, 220 studies were selected in the Web of Science database to access the articles. Within the scope of bibliometric analysis, the most used keywords, the most cited journals, the most publishing journals, the most publishing countries and the most cited authors were analyzed with the VOSViewer program. In content analysis, methodological trends (method, sample size, data collection tool, data analysis type) used in the studies were examined. As a result of the research, the most publications were made in the last quarter of 2020, 16% of the studies were single-author and the quantitative research method was the most preferred (40%), the sample was mostly university students (n=78). It was observed that it was clustered between 0-100 intervals, the most frequently used questionnaire (n=105) as the data collection tool, and the descriptive-quantitative analysis method (40%) was used as the data analysis method. Also, the most publications are made in America and China, the most used keywords are "covid-19", "online education" and "distance education", the most cited authors are Chen, Cong, Peng and Yang, and finally It has been observed that the highly cited journal has Sustainability.

The Bibliometric Analysis of Studies on Distance Education

“…Since education has a significant impact on a country's development (Petrakis & Stamakis, 2002), competitiveness (Lachmann, 1999), and socio-economic development (Sakmurzaeva, 2018), the collected results are acceptable. The findings regarding the keyword analysis within the scope of the research were similar to the keywords in the studies conducted by Yavuz et al (2021), Karakose & Demirkol (2021), Erbay (2020), andSweileh (2021).…”

“…Considering that the COVID-19 epidemic started in December 2019 and the subsequent transition to distance education, this situation can be interpreted as an expected result. Yavuz et al (2021) examined the articles about distance education during the pandemic and concluded that the studies were mainly published in the last quarter of 2020. Sweileh (2021) stated that publications on distance education in the field of health reached a peak in 2020.…”

“…When the literature is reviewed, it is seen that there are bibliometric studies on COVID-19 in different disciplines (health, education, business, and management) (Verma & Gustafsson, 2020;Wang & Tian, 2021;Yavuz et al, 2021). While some researchers discuss COVID-19 from a general perspective (Dehghanbanadaki et al, 2020;Hamidah et al, 2020), the others focus on a specific country or geography (Guleid et al, 2021;Turatto et al, 2021).…”

“…The literature suggests that there is very limited bibliometric research for education. One of these studies is Yavuz et al (2021). This study includes methodological trends (method, sample size, data collection tools, and analysis type) and bibliometric analysis (keyword, citation analysis, co-citation analysis, and co-authorship analysis) of 220 studies selected through WOS.…”

“…The literature reflects that the studies concentrating on the bibliometric analysis of distance education publications during the COVID-19 epidemic period were quite limited (Sweileh, 2021;Karakose & Demirkol, 2021;Yavuz et al, 2021). However, a study conducted by Aggarwal et al (2020) on 3641 articles concluded that research on education is less than 1%.…”