Hu, M., Arnesen, K., Barbour, M. K., & Leary, H. (2021, April). A newcomer’s lens: A look at K-12 online and blended learning in the Journal of Online Learning Research. [Paper] Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, virtual.

1. Min Hu, Karen T. Arnesen, Heather Leary
– Brigham Young University
Michael K. Barbour – Touro University
California
A Newcomer’s Lens:
A Look at K-12 Online and Blended Learning
in the Journal of Online Learning Research
Hu, M., Arnesen, K., Barbour, M.K. & Leary, H. (2019). A Newcomer’s Lens: A Look at K-12 Online and Blended Learning in the Journal
of Online Learning Research. Journal of Online Learning Research, 5(2), 123-144.

2. Content
01
02
03
04
Introduction Results
Methodology Conclusions

3. 1. Introduction
• Only a small percentage of articles in the more
general distance/online learning journals focused
on the K-12 environment.
• In 2015 the Journal of Online Learning Research
(JOLR) was established to publish articles related to
K-12 online and blended learning.
• In order to better understand the field of K-12
online and/or blended learning, we analyzed 51
articles published in JOLR between 2015 and 2018
to examine the trends in topics, article types,
authorship, geography, research methods and
citations.

4. 2. Methodology
• Article Topics: Extract the top relevant two- and three-word
phrases to determine the central topics.
• Geography Analysis: Examine either the geographic location of the
study or the geographic focus of the article itself and the geographic
location of the author based on their institutional location.
• Methodologies Analysis: Code each article according to six
possible categories to identify the methodological trends.
• Authorship Analysis: Extract the frequency of each author’s
contributions.
• Citation Analysis: Analyze 51 articles to identify the 12 top-cited
articles.

5. Article Topics
3-word phrases Number of articles Phrase count
Face-to-face 8 9
Online and blended 5 7
Online course design 5 6
Blended learning
environment(s)
4 6
Online learning
environment(s)
4 5
Students with
disabilities
3 6
Community of
engagement
2 4
2-word phrases Number of articles Phrase Count
Blended learning 14 29
Online teacher(s) 13 29
Online courses(s) 12 25
Professional
development
12 23
High school 9 19
Online Learning 8 9
Learning environment(s) 5 8
Frequency of phrases in abstracts
• “Blended learning” and
“online teacher(s)” were
the most frequent topic
phrases.
• The topic of professional
development is of
particular note.
3. Results

6. Geography
• 82% of studies occurred or were
conducted in the United States.
42
1 1 1 1
5
0
10
20
30
40
50
United
States
Turkey Brazil India Multiple
countries
Unable to
determine
No.
of
studies
Location where the study took place
115
5 3 2 1 1
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
United States United
Kingdom
Turkey Brazil Canada India
No.
of
authors
Geography
Geographical location of authors
• 93% of authors’ institutional affiliations
were located in the United States.

7. Article Types and Methodologies
• There were 31% interpretive studies and 29% inferential studies.
31%
29%
22%
12%
4% 2%
Categorization of all articles published
Interpretive Inferential Combined Theoretical Content Analysis Descriptive

8. Authorship
• Jered Borup was a top author with the greatest number of publications and the
highest author rank.
0
2
4
6
8
10
Authorship
No. of articles No. of Ponits

9. Citations
• These top cited articles covered all methodological categories except the
descriptive category.
22
18
13
11
10
8 8 8 8
7 7 7
0
5
10
15
20
25
Inferential Interpretive Combined Combined Theoretical Theoretical Inferential Inferential Interpretive Inferential Content Interpretive
Citations
Types
Citation and Article Types

10. 4. Conclusion
● The additional attention JOLR has given to blended contexts.
JOLR also raises awareness of the importance of teachers’
professional development in online and blended environments.
● Future research can continue to examine the trend analysis over
a more extended period.
● Researchers outside of the United States should be encouraged to
conduct research that focuses on other countries in addition to
the United States.

11. THANKS
Min Hu, Karen Arnesen,
Michael K. Barbour, Heather Leary