A Systematic Mapping Review on MOOC Recommender Systems

Online learning environments (OLE) including learning management systems (LMS) and massive open online courses (MOOCs) are gaining popularity as the best modern alternate solutions available for education in the current era. The luxury to learn irrespective of geographical and temporal restrictions makes it an attractive resource. At the start of 2020, the global pandemic enforced social distance practice worldwide, changing the work environment dynamics, leaving options like online trading, work from home, and online education. Online learning environments gained particular attention in the educational sector, where users could access the online learning resources to fulfil their academic requirements during the lockdown. From massively available content such as MOOC, learners are overwhelmed with the available choices. In this scenario, recommender systems (RS) come to the rescue to help the learner make appropriate choices for completing the enrolled course. There is tremendous scope and a multitude of opportunities available for researchers to focus on this domain. An exhaustive analysis is required to spotlight the opportunities in this realm. Various studies have been performed to provide such solutions in multiple areas of the MOOC recommendation systems (MOOCRS) such as course recommendation, learner peer recommendation, resource recommendations, to name a few. This is a compendious study into the research conducted in this area, identifying 670 articles out of 116 selected for analysis published from 2013 to 2021. It also highlights multiple areas in MOOC, where the recommendation is required, as well as technologies used by other researchers to provide solutions over time.