Abstract
The journey of business, management, and accounting education over the past decades included several teaching methods which may nowadays be considered outdated for the modern students who live, learn, and connect through technology. This study clusters the academic literature addressing online learning and b-learning applied to educational and training in the business, management, and accounting. Through the collection of all the relevant publications in Scopus, this study uses automated text mining techniques in VOSviewer software for comparing the evolution overtime of the online and blended methods in the context of scientific knowledge production. The results unveil that online-learning-related literature is grouped in nine clusters, instead of the seven clusters in case of blended learning, meaning that the first is more disperse in terms of topics. An in-depth analysis of the studies most closely related to each cluster's terms allow the authors to provide critical reflections that help professionals when choosing the accurate method and also the academics in identifying future research agendas.
TopBackground
The learning methods changed radically when technology started to be incorporated in education. The concept of distance learning gained force as a “system design that are effectively incorporated in delivering education to student teacher and student may communicate asynchronously and synchronously” (Al-Arimi, 2014). The literature describes a journey in which E-learning appeared as a way of offer tools to both students and teachers for running remote training and online courses. It includes for instance the use of wiki and blogs, chats, e-mail, and multimedia CD-ROMs (Martín et al., 2008). The B-Learning method allowed to combine the distance, online and on-class education which depends on the availability of resources, which were scarce in COVID-19 pandemic (Santos et al., 2021). The term hybrid learning and B-Learning are used interchangeably, but they mean the some in literature (Hrastinski, 2019). This concept refers to a training or teaching environment combining face-to-face education with access to online learning tools (Hall & Davison, 2007). The role of B-Learning is especially relevant in the post lockdown period, in supporting the flexible learning expected in transitioning between fully online and blended (Nerantzi, 2020).
When social media become a reality, their impact was studied in order to understand how could it provoke a positive disruption in education, E-Learning and B-Learning. (King, 2012) actually confirmed that critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity and innovation applied to social media tools could positively impact in educational and professional settings. E-learning tools were particularly relevant for mitigating constraints in educational sectors during the first lockdown period of COVID-19 pandemic, in which schools were closed and the contact between trainers/professors and trainees/students was exclusively online. Recent studies revealed the contribution of e-learning resources or facilities for the students' performance, showing a positive thought among students about e-learning (Sathishkumar et al., 2020).
Key Terms in this Chapter
VOSviewer: VOSviewer is a software tool for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks.
Blended Learning: This is an educational and training method that combines offline (face-to-face, traditional learning) and online learning.
Text Mining: A technique of data analysis useful for analysis of unstructured text. This is a computer-assisted text analysis technique that provides insights regarding the most cited terms in corpus.
Online Learning: This is an educational and training method that uses Information and Communication Technologies for remote and distance education.