Studies on E-learning in the workplace from 2013-2020: A bibliometric review

Abstract: The development of technology has substantially influenced the way of learning in all educational fields and academic institutions (Cohen & Karatzimas, 2022). To adapt to the technology advancement such as automation, artificial intelligence robotics, Internet of Things, big data, blockchain, workforce nowadays is expected to be flexible, highly skilled, coordinated, creative, and strategic, rendering constant improvement of skills and upskills through lifelong learning (Qiu et al. 2021). In addition, the Covid-19 pandemic requires distance learning, increasing the use of online educational systems worldwide (Maatuk et al., 2022). E-learning, defined as online learning and teaching using network technologies, is undoubtedly one of the most powerful responses to the growing need for learning and education (Čevra et al., 2022). As Beller and or (1998) argued that e-learning is an appropriate solution to meet today’s needs for lifelong learning.
Accordingly, e-learning in the workplace has gained continued traction in both academic and professional arenas in recent decades. Research on e-learning in the workplace has dramatically increased during recent years (Giannakos et al., 2021). For example, Čevra et al. (2022) explored e-learning in organizations and the influence of organizational support on the intention to use e-learning systems and how the use of e-learning improves individual work performance. Gupta et al. (2021) argued that E-learning modules on occupational health helped to address the psychosocial issues of the remotest employee through robust digital e learning platform, which otherwise would have been difficult to achieve with physical training program. Given increasing attention in academia, Giannakos et al. (2021) even provided a systematic review of empirical studies of e-learning in the workplace to summarize the current findings. Cheng et al. (2014) also conducted a bibliometric analysis of 324 articles on the research on workplace e-learning from 2000 to 2012. However, there is no bibliometric analysis of the studies of E-learning in the workplace published from 2013 to 2022. We discover that there is a need for an extensive, thematic overview of related studies for a better understanding of this broad domain during recent years. This paper attempts to fill this gap by providing a comprehensive picture and a holistic view of the research on the workplace e-learning in recent 10 years.
We follow Baker et al.’s (2021) guidelines and seek to answer the following research questions (RQs):
RQ1. What are the publication trend and citation patterns of the research on the workplace e-learning in recent 10 years?
RQ2. Who are the most productive authors, affiliated institutions, and countries or territories?
RA3.Which are the influential articles on the workplace e-learning in recent 10 years?
RQ5. What is the collaborative relationship among the contributing authors and countries?
RQ6. What are keywords and main themes (research areas)?
RQ7. What are the research gaps?
To provide answers to the above research questions, we use VOSviewer (van Eck & Waltman, 2010) for bibliographic analysis. We obtain the bibliographic data from the Scopus database. Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and it is a widely recognized and frequently accessed database for scientific productions (DuránSánchez et al., 2019). Our bibliometric analysis includes articles on workplace e-learning published in academic journals from 2013 to 2022.
This study will help us to visualize the past analysis, discover the gaps, and highlight the future needs. Our research aims to give an overview of where we are in e-learning scholarship. We will also discuss the competitive research areas and new trends to work as strategies that HRD scholars can use purposefully to influence the future of e-learning research directions.