The Global Research Trends on the Growth of Remote Learning in Higher Education Institutions: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Remote learning has rapidly emerged as one of the most fundamental approaches in facilitating self-directed learning in Higher Learning Institutions. The purpose of this paper was to conduct a bibliometric study on the global trends in research about remote learning during 1961 to 2021 period. A bibliometric analysis of 719 research articles from the Dimensions database was carried out. The VOSviewer1.6.16 software was used to carry out visual analysis of the publications to establish the network and overlay visualization maps. The results indicate that there has been a steady growth of research articles on remote learning during COVID-19 pandemic of which ‘Polytechnic Institute of Porto’ was the leading organization in terms of publications. Countries which are most productive include the United States, Russia and the United Kingdom while ‘Corter’ and ‘Kreijns’ were the most cited authors and ‘Lima’ and ‘Viegas’ were the authors with highest links in terms of collaboration. Regarding the co-occurrence of key words, it was found that keywords such as ‘experience’, ‘COVID’, ‘internet’ ‘poverty’ ‘interaction’, ‘inequality’, ‘social emotions’ and ‘online interactions’ had strong association with remote learning. The findings suggest the need for developing countries to allocate adequate funds on remote learning.