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  • Article
    Citation - WoS: 53
    Investigation of Emerging Trends in the E-Learning Field Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation
    (Athabasca Univ Press, 2021) Gurcan, Fatih; Ozyurt, Ozcan; Cagiltay, Nergiz Ercil
    E-learning studies are becoming very important today as they provide alternatives and support to all types of teaching and learning programs. The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on educational systems has further increased the significance of e-learning. Accordingly, gaining a full understanding of the general topics and trends in e-learning studies is critical for a deeper comprehension of the field. There are many studies that provide such a picture of the e-learning field, but the limitation is that they do not examine the field as a whole. This study aimed to investigate the emerging trends in the e-learning field by implementing a topic modeling analysis based on latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) on 41,925 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2000 and 2019. The analysis revealed 16 topics reflecting emerging trends and developments in the e-learning field. Among these, the topics "MOOC," "learning assessment," and "elearning systems" were found to be key topics in the field, with a consistently high volume. In addition, the topics of "learning algorithms," "learning factors," and "adaptive learning" were observed to have the highest overall acceleration, with the first two identified as having a higher acceleration in recent years. Going by these results, it is concluded that the next decade of e-learning studies will focus on learning factors and algorithms, which will possibly create a baseline for more individualized and adaptive mobile platforms. In other words, after a certain maturity level is reached by better understanding the learning process through these identified learning factors and algorithms, the next generation of e-learning systems will be built on individualized and adaptive learning environments. These insights could be useful for e-learning communities to improve their research efforts and their applications in the field accordingly.
  • Article
    Citation - WoS: 20
    Citation - Scopus: 25
    Detecting Latent Topics and Trends in Software Engineering Research Since 1980 Using Probabilistic Topic Modeling
    (Ieee-inst Electrical Electronics Engineers inc, 2022) Gurcan, Fatih; Dalveren, Gonca Gokce Menekse; Cagiltay, Nergiz Ercil; Soylu, Ahmet
    The landscape of software engineering research has changed significantly from one year to the next in line with industrial needs and trends. Therefore, today's research literature on software engineering has a rich and multidisciplinary content that includes a large number of studies; however, not many of them demonstrate a holistic view of the field. From this perspective, this study aimed to reveal a holistic view that reflects topics, trends, and trajectories in software engineering research by analyzing the majority of domain-specific articles published over the last 40 years. This study first presents an objective and systematic method for corpus creation through major publication sources in the field. A corpus was then created using this method, which includes 44 domain-specific conferences and journals and 57,174 articles published between 1980 and 2019. Next, this corpus was analyzed using an automated text-mining methodology based on a probabilistic topic-modeling approach. As a result of this analysis, 24 main topics were found. In addition, topical trends in the field were revealed. Finally, three main developmental stages of the field were identified as: the programming age, the software development age, and the software optimization age.
  • Article
    Citation - WoS: 31
    Citation - Scopus: 40
    Research Trends on Distance Learning: a Text Mining-Based Literature Review From 2008 To 2018
    (Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2023) Gurcan, Fatih; Cagiltay, Nergiz Ercil
    Today's dynamic distance learning environments offer a flexible, comfortable, and lifelong learning experience, independent of space and time. In this way, it also supports and develops existing traditional training programs. The increasing importance of knowledge, skills and learning in today's technological life cycle has led to an increase and diversification of research and applications in distance learning. Accordingly, distance learning literature has a rich content supported by a multidisciplinary background. From this point of view, it is crucial to perceive the research landscape reflecting the general themes and trends studied in the field of distance learning. This study aims at revealing the distance learning research themes and trends by analyzing the 27,735 articles of journal conducted in the last decade. The methodology of the study is based on semantic content analysis implemented by N-gram-based text categorization technique. As a result, 10 main themes are discovered, namely, "System establishment", "Media", "Assessment", "Method", "Content", "Education levels", "Learner", "Research methods", "Interaction-Communication", and "Resource-Material-Tool". In this context, the findings of the study are expected to provide significant insights to guide prospective research and practice in the field and to develop continuous improvements and standards for distance education communities.