Research trends in ICT and education: A systematic review of continuous professional development courses for online educators

Abstract

Abstract The role of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) and online courses in Continuous Professional Development (CPD) for educators have remain debatable. A limited number of studies have systematically been reviewed on the growing influence of ICTs and continuous professional development courses for online educators. This paper aims to extract the value and appropriateness of the trends concerning the focus, types, and context of CPD, the goals and tools of research, and the types of data collected. To map the popular trends, methods, and ICT tools used in CPD online courses as a research methodology, researchers performed a systematic literature review of studies written in English and published between January 2015 and January 2019. Inclusion and exclusion principles were employed to identify studies of any ICTs based in CPD design that examine the concept of online professional development courses through the point of view of the design used and to review the impact that ICTs have had on numerous aspects of teaching and learning for educators. Researchers screened and retrieved all possible titles and abstracts and potentially relevant studies to established whether the study met the inclusion criteria. The results of the review revealed that ICTs have certain influences on online CPD for educators and that this influence applies to educators.