ABSTRACT

Distance education (DE) is a constantly evolving and advancing field, and as such, its intellectual network and dynamics need to be investigated and explored. In this regard, this study reviewed a total of 1685 articles and 51,940 references through social network analysis for a bibliometric examination of the DE field. The findings indicate that DE is an interdisciplinary field and part of mainstream education. The progressive knowledge domain analysis revealed that the intellectual roots of DE stem from generic social learning theories, after which DE-related theories began to emerge following the foundation of open universities. The research concludes that there was a paradigm shift that resulted from developments in online networked technologies in the 2000s, at which time DE started to gradually evolve into sixth generation ubiquitous DE.

摘要

远程教育（DE）是一个不断发展和发展的领域，因此，它的知识网络和动力需要进行研究和探索。在这方面，本研究通过社交网络分析对DE领域的文献计量学研究，共审查了1685篇文章和51,940篇参考文献。研究结果表明，DE是一个跨学科领域，是主流教育的一部分。渐进的知识领域分析表明，DE的知识渊源于通用的社会学习理论，此后，随着开放大学的建立，与DE相关的理论开始出现。该研究得出的结论是，由于2000年代在线网络技术的发展而导致了范式的转变，那时DE开始逐渐演变为第六代普遍存在的DE。