Investigation of research about massive open online courses: Thematic content analysis study

The aim of this study is to integrate the results of the researches carried out over the last 10 years with a clear overview and to determine the general trends, and also to develop further suggestions that will contribute to the development of the MOOC literature. Therefore, this research is carried out with a quantitative point of view and a content analysis study has been conducted about the MOOCs. In this study, thematic content analysis is used as a content analysis type. In the searching process conducted on the Web of Science database, the articles to be reached were expected to be indexed in SSCI, AHCI, SCI-E and ESCI citation indexes. 123 articles obtained as a result of the searching process were examined in terms of the determined criteria and their contents were analyzed and classified. Research findings revealed that MOOC studies were mostly conducted with university students or MOOC educators. In this study, it has been observed that studies are generally performed with small scale and less open MOOCs, and these MOOCs are limited to 200-500 learners. Theoretical foundations of MOOC researches are generally not emphasized and this finding has been supported by the literature. In MOOC researches, it is generally concluded that empirical research has been carried out. Parallel to this finding, descriptive statistics were mostly used in the MOOC studies. It is seen that 20% of the MOOC studies are design studies, and it is known that the design is the process of designing the MOOCs. Finally, it can be stated that due to the fact that most of the MOOC studies included in the searching process of this research have not received any citation yet, more qualified studies are needed in the literature.