The role of MOOCs in engineering education: An exploratory systematic review of peer-reviewed literature

The aim of the current study is to explore and evaluate the current status of massive open online courses (MOOCs) in the field of Engineering Education. In line with this aim, the study intends to identify and map the role of "MOOCs in engineering education research" through a review of empirical articles published in peer-reviewed journals indexed in the "Web of Science," "IEEE Xplore," "Scopus," "Science Direct," and the "ACM Digital Library" databases. Social network analysis, content analysis, and inferential-descriptive statistics were applied in the study. The study's findings indicate a growing trend in "MOOCs in engineering education research." Online virtual labs, social networks, flipped classroom strategy, active learning, small private online courses, and motivation are the key lodestar topics in "MOOCs in engineering education research" and engineering education researchers mostly employ practice-based and quantitative research approaches. Besides this, it was found that engineering education researchers use MOOCs for three main purposes: designing a domain-specific MOOC with unique features; developing a system/model for e-learning and MOOCs, or aiming to improve engineering education using interactive online technologies. The findings of the current study indicate that engineering education researchers primarily give importance to performance outcomes and motivation in learning, and try to increase the quality of engineering education through the use of MOOCs. Finally, the findings imply that the general discourse among the sampled articles is positive, and may be considered useful in the exploration of potential research into "MOOCs in engineering education research."