Mapping research trends from 35 years of publications in Distance Education
Abstract This article maps out trends in distance education research and scholarship from 35 years of publications in the Distance Education journal. Titles and abstracts of 515 full papers were analyzed using the text mining tool LeximancerTM to identify and describe themes in distance education research covered by these publications in the journal over the period 1980 2014. Analysis of titles and abstracts over 5 year periods reveals the following broad emerging themes over the seven time periods: professionalization and institutional consolidation (1980 1984) instructional design and educational technology (1985 1989) quality assurance in distance education (1990 1994) student support and early stages of online learning (1995 1999) the emergence of the virtual university (2000 2004) collaborative learning and online interaction patterns (2005 2009) and interactive learning, MOOCs and OERs (2010 2014) The place of these themes within waves of alternating institutional and individual research is discussed.