Visual Analysis of MOOC Research Using Citespace from 2012 to 2018

Having risen the attention of both researchers and practitioners, MOOC is becoming a hot research topic in the field of online learning and educational technology. This paper presents a visual analysis and systematic review of MOOC literature from 2012-2018. A literature visualization software named CiteSpace has been used to map the research results. A total number of 2056 of papers about MOOC and associated 20679 references have been collected as source data. The key authors, influential institutions, top keywords, influential journals, and future research trends in this field have been identified. The combination of different concepts, solving the realistic problem of MOOC, deeper integration of learning analytics and MOOC, the design of gamification enhanced MOOC are major trends in MOOC research. We recommend researchers may consider other research methods besides experimental research, such as neuro science design to study MOOC.