Scientific production and MOOCs in a higher education context: A social network analysis approach

Abstract

The MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) is the latest training model offered by higher education institutions. As a teaching and learning approach that is free, and therefore devoid of economic or social barriers at the onset, it looks quite promising. But is it so? In order to gain greater understanding of the focus of current research and to indicate future research guidelines that may provide answers to some pertinent questions, this study aims to analyze the scientific production based on SCOPUS and carried out under the keywords “Massive Open Online Course” and “Higher Education”. Using the methodology of social network analysis in order to get a “picture” of relations between authors who publish in this field, the results of the analysis show that interest in this issue was first expressed in 2013 and is currently on the rise, raising more and more interest. The graphical analysis of the interactive network reveals little interaction among authors, but most publications are co-authored by four researchers. Also, the network indicators analysis reveals that the density and centrality are very low.