The mainstream and pattern detection of e-learning acceptance research : Insights from a bibliometric analysis (2010-2021)

Abstract

Electronic learning has begun to attract the attention with Covid-19 pandemic. In this regard, it will be timely and critical to conduct a bibliometric analysis to identify developments in e-learning adoption research and to guide future research. In this study, a total of 1251 studies about the adoption of e-learning conducted in the last eleven years as of June 2021, reached with the scanning of the Web of Science (WoS) database, were identified and bibliometric analysis was performed on these studies. VOSviewer software was used in order to conduct bibliometric mapping, and Harzing’s Publish and Perish software was used to calculate the h-index. According to the bibliometric analysis, the research on the adoption of e-learning is a field that has grown and developed exponentially since 2010. While Taiwan draws attention as the most contributing country in the e-learning adoption literature, National Central University was the contributing institution. According to the keyword co-occurrence analysis, in terms of e-learning adoption studies, the keywords such as mobile learning, blended learning, higher education, TAM, UTAUT and structural equation model came to the fore. In recent years, covid-19, mobile technologies, flipped classrooms, social media, MOOC, PLS-SEM, and UTAUT-2 stand out as trending topics. As a result, the findings of the study provide a comprehensive description of the field and provide important, enlightening and stimulating information for researchers who are willing to conduct studies on e-learning adoption and will be willing to do so in the future.