The state of the art in blended learning research in a time of the Covid-19 pandemic: Coronavirus diaries in the educational realm

The Covid-19 pandemic was a crisis on a global scale, and it impacted not only our lives but also our understanding of the educational landscape. There were many waves of the pandemic at varying levels and as these waves hit our globe, the way we live and see the world has been changing. Consequently, we entered a time which was called the new normal which required being flexible, resilient, and adaptive. The educational landscape has also been challenged by the waves of the pandemic. The onsite (face-to-face) learning was replaced by online distance learning which was attributed as emergency remote teaching and learning in many cases. As the new normal forced us to change our traditional notions and practices, many higher education institutions adopted blended learning to benefit from opportunities of both modalities, that is, onsite and online learning. In this regard, this study implements a systematic approach to examine papers published in the first two years of the pandemic on blended learning. For this purpose, the study adopts social network analysis and text mining to examine a total of 104 peer-reviewed publications. The initial findings identified four broad themes. Accordingly, these are (1) diversity and confusion in the blended learning terminology, (2) Learning experiences and effectiveness of blended learning practices, (3) technology-dominated and online-mediated blended learning approaches, and (4) blended learning for applied and practical courses. The paper discusses these themes, provides suggestions, and explains implications for future research directions.