*Review* **Scientific Review and Annotated Bibliography of Teaching in Higher Education Academies on Online Learning: Adapting to the COVID-19 Pandemic**

**Chiemela Victor Amaechi 1,2, \* , Ebube Charles Amaechi 3 , Abiodun Kolawole Oyetunji 4 and Irish Mpho Kgosiemang 5**


**Abstract:** Since COVID-19 first appeared, e-learning has become more and more common. In order to understand gender disparities in e-learners' self-efficacy, satisfaction, motivation, attitude, and performance globally, this study will look at these variables. Many educational institutions have been forced to close due to the sudden COVID-19 outbreak, and many students have been forced to stay at home and take online courses. With the recent COVID-19 pandemic underway, there were challenges with STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) modules and other teaching contents due to practical laboratory sessions and workshops required. Thus, the need to understand teaching style, online learning and its role in promoting a variety of desirable academic outcomes, such as increased achievement and decreased dropout rates, as well as various well-being and life outcomes, has advanced significantly. In this paper, the scientific review on teaching in Higher Education Academies (HEA) for online learning is presented with their frontiers towards sustainable education. The current work also gives an annotated bibliography that aims to consolidate and synthesise the literature on student engagement, online learning, social media, and teacher learning/training. Some conclusions and recommendations were also made on the study.

**Keywords:** teaching; higher education academy (HEA); learning; COVID-19; STEM; online learning; sustainability; systematic review; annotated bibliography; education; cultural difference; group

### **1. Introduction**

Since COVID-19 first appeared, e-learning has become more common [1–7]. In order to understand disparities in e-learners' self-efficacy, satisfaction, motivation, attitude, and performance globally, an annotated bibliography on related studies that looks at these variables is necessary. Many educational institutions have been forced to close due to the sudden COVID-19 outbreak, and many students have been forced to stay at home and take online courses [8–14]. With the COVID-19 epidemic underway, there were challenges with STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) modules due to practical laboratory sessions and workshops required [15–20]. Without regard to their physical location, e-mentoring enables teachers to communicate with students via email, online chat, and bulletin boards. As a result, when students feel engaged in an activity, they are better able to develop their own knowledge. The need to have better teaching styles, teaching tools, and effective teachers globally that will continue to foster quality education is the bedrock of any Higher Education Academy (HEA). To ensure that learners can benefit from mentoring, it is crucial to comprehend learners' attitudes regarding online mentoring. Feedback can come from both the mentors and the students. Reflecting on student feedback and the use

**Citation:** Amaechi, C.V.; Amaechi, E.C.; Oyetunji, A.K.; Kgosiemang, I.M. Scientific Review and Annotated Bibliography of Teaching in Higher Education Academies on Online Learning: Adapting to the COVID-19 Pandemic. *Sustainability* **2022**, *14*, 12006. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su141912006

Academic Editors: Diego Monferrer, Alma Rodríguez Sánchez and Marta Estrada-Guillén

Received: 9 July 2022 Accepted: 15 September 2022 Published: 22 September 2022

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**Copyright:** © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

of e-study as digital tools for teaching, such as e-boards, projectors, public address systems, and state-of-the-art lecture e-kits, are highly emphasized in Higher Education Institutions (HEI). Having these teaching aids, the student can download teaching notes as electronic files or use their mobile phones to record the lecture notes so they can be revised as their own files later.

One of the primary challenges that educational institutions and libraries face is the availability of annotated bibliographies that cover teaching methods in HEAs. Annotated bibliographies could be used to identify knowledge gaps, such as understanding student engagements by using studies on the lack of participation against high-level participation of students. However, some other annotated bibliographies present different levels of course-based teaching in English [21–27], but there is a gap for general teaching in HEAs. Also, there are other annotated bibliographies on different fields ranging from areas of teaching [28], virtual exchange [29], STEM teacher education [30,31], gender bias [32], digital library [33], plagiarism in engineering [34], online learning [35], technical education career [36], curriculum design [37], engaged learning [38], group works [39], business models [40,41], economics of education [42], scheduling [43], forecasting [44], algorithms [45], distance learning [46,47], sociology [48,49], greedy randomized adaptive search procedure (GRASP) optimisation [50], geological lineation [51], to health [52]. However, there is a need to sustain the quality of teaching in HEAs. To address this challenge, the authors outlined strategies for communicating the purpose and value of the discussion, setting clear expectations for responses, and designing a structure for the discussion. Another aspect of teaching is online learning, which has recently increased globally due to the COVID-19 pandemic [20,52]. Higher education institutions started using the internet as an alternate learning environment in addition to traditional teaching and learning methods in front of classes about 30 years ago [53]. For students and educators that actively participate in online courses, this type of environment continues to provide significant obstacles, thus, there is a need to include these themes in an annotated bibliography. Some studies reviewing best practices adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic in teaching also presented some lessons learnt [53–57]. The pandemic has availed us to have new perspectives, and lessons have been learnt by institutions as well as their teacher educators during COVID-19 [58–62]. Despite the enormous hurdles during the pandemic, there are positives that will endure over the long term. Due to COVID-19, our entire educational system and organisational structure had to transition to fully remote communication and online learning [63–67]. This means that all the teachers, instructors, and students have to understand that technological improvements need to urgently and significantly help address our sustainability challenges given how swiftly they have spread around the world. It is pertinent that the teachers understand student engagement and determine how learners feel about teaching. This could be adaptable, from having blended learning, online mentoring, to group learning studies. However, the latter is covered in another publication [67] of this annotated biography on teaching in HEAs.

In this paper, the scientific review with an annotated bibliography on teaching in HEAs covers themes on teaching and learning, presented with their frontiers towards sustainable education. Section 1 introduces the study and covers related studies on student assessments, teaching curriculum, and online learning, while Section 2 presents the methodology for the annotated bibliography. Section 3 presents the scientific literature review with scientometric review on teaching in HEAs and lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. The current work, an annotated bibliography that aims to consolidate and to synthesise the literature on teaching style, is presented in Section 4. Section 5 presents the conclusions on the study. The study presents literature on learners' attitudes toward online learning to enable teachers to achieve better understanding of the students and it will serve as a reference guide for educators.

### **2. Materials and Methods**

This section covers the materials and methods adopted for this annotated bibliography on the teaching style in Higher Education Academies (HEA). To obtain this data, the search was obtained from existing repositories from various institutions from annotated bibliographies and from the Scopus database. Scopus was selected because it has broader range of coverage, it is faster in indexing processes, and it has more recent publications on the literature search. Using the Scopus database, 88 documents were obtained and included in this annotated bibliography in this subject area. The search syntax used in Scopus was "teaching AND higher AND education AND academy AND online AND learning OR COVID-19", as shown in Figure 1 showing the methodology for obtaining the data used, and the search results from the Scopus database are shown in Figure 2.

**Figure 1.** Methodology for the annotated bibliography on the search phrase "teaching AND higher AND education AND academy AND online AND learning OR COVID-19".

**Figure 2.** Scopus database supplied by Lancaster University UK showing the search phrase "teaching AND higher AND education AND academy AND online AND learning OR COVID-19" for the annotated bibliography on the meta-analysis of 88 publications. ‐

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### **3. Scientific Review and Scientometric Analysis on the Annotated Bibliography**

In this section, the scientific review and scientometric analysis were conducted for the annotated bibliography on teaching in higher education academies based on the research themes. In this study, the research trends were investigated from the publication history, the publication classification, the subject area, the publication by country, journal range, the author keywords, and the publication by affiliations. To understand the research pattern on teaching in HEAs, data were retrieved from Scopus and are presented in the findings in Figures 3–10.

**Figure 3.** Results of publication records for the research on "teaching AND higher AND education AND academy AND online AND learning OR COVID-19" (data retrieved from Scopus database on 22 August 2022).

**Figure 4.** Results of publications by subject area for the research on "teaching AND higher AND education AND academy AND online AND learning OR COVID-19" (data retrieved from Scopus database on 22 August 2022).

**Figure 5.** Results of publications by classification (or type) for the research on "teaching AND higher AND education AND academy AND online AND learning OR COVID-19" (data retrieved from Scopus database on 22 August 2022).

**Figure 6.** Results of publications by countries for the research on "teaching AND higher AND education AND academy AND online AND learning OR COVID-19" (data retrieved from Scopus database on 22 August 2022).

**Figure 7.** Results showing range of journal publications for the research on "teaching AND higher AND education AND academy AND online AND learning OR COVID-19" (data retrieved from Scopus database on 22 August 2022). See details in Supplementary Materials.

**Figure 8.** Results of publications by affiliation for the research on "teaching AND higher AND education AND academy AND online AND learning OR COVID-19" (data retrieved from Scopus database on 22 August 2022).

**Figure 9.** Word cloud for the author keywords research on "teaching AND higher AND education AND academy AND online AND learning OR COVID-19" using Voyant tools.

From Figure 3, it was observed that there were different shifts in this subject area as seen in the pattern of the publications from 2003 to 2022. The highest number of publications was 13 publications in 2021, followed by 11 publications in 2013, followed by 9 publications in 2012 and mid-2022, followed by 8 publications in 2017, followed by 7 publications in 2020. The highest occurrence by year was two publications, which appeared four times in 2003, 2005, 2009, and 2010. The second highest occurrence by year was four publications, which appeared three times in 2010, 2013, 2020, and 2021. It was observed that different global occurrences could have affected the research trends noticed in this subject area, such as the 2008 global economic recession, the 2016 drop in oil price, and the COVID-19 pandemic that hit the global world in 2020. It was observed that the publications did not increase around these times, but further evidence is required to support this pattern. With the increase in online learning, publications rose from 7 publications in 2020 to 13 publications in 2021, showing a sharp increase of 65% between both years.

From Figure 4, it was observed that the publications from the search were mostly journal papers or articles (55%), which covered 48 publications, followed by conference papers (30%), which covered 26 publications. It was then followed by book chapters (9%), which covered 8 publications, followed by reviews (2%) which covered 2 publications. There was also one publication that was a full book, one editorial, one erratum, and one conference review paper, which were each the least prevalent (1%). This shows that most publications on this subject area were available as articles or journal papers.

From Figure 5, it was observed that the subject area from the search with the highest publications was Social Sciences (45%) with 62 publications, followed by Computer Science (14%) with 20 publications, then by Engineering (12%) with 16 publications. It was followed by Medicine (8%) with 11 publications, followed by Arts and Humanities (4%) with 6 publications, followed by Business, Management, and Accounting (3%) with 4 publications. The next set each produced two publications—Health professions (1%), Chemistry (1%) Environmental Science (1%), Nursing (1%), and Psychology (1%)—followed by the last set, which produced one publication each—Materials Science, Neuroscience, Pharmacology, Mathematics, Physics, and Astronomy.

From Figure 6, it was observed that the country with the highest publications is the United States of America (U.S.A.) with 29 publications, followed by the United Kingdom (U.K.) with 24 publications. The next pair of publications was much lower as Australia had 5 publications, followed by the pair whereby each nation had four publications, India and South Africa, followed by the next set of publications whereby each nation had three publications, Malaysia and the Russian Federation. The next set of publications whereby each nation had two publications included Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, and Ukraine. The smallest set of publications by country had one publication each (Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Finland, Germany, Italy, Poland, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain, and United Arab Emirates). However, there were five publications that were undefined from the Scopus data retrieved from this search. It was also observed that the U.S.A. and the U.K., which are both developed countries that make significant investments in educational research, are the study's top two countries.

Another aspect of the research trend is seen from the publications where these articles were published as given in Figure 7. Also, the range of publications in this subject area is spread across different areas, and the highest number of publications (two articles) in this area was published in the journals called *"Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology" and "Library Philosophy and Practice".* The second set of publications had one article each, which include: "*Academic Psychiatry", "Advances in Digital Education and Lifelong Learning", "African Journal of Library Archives and Information Science", "Aging Clinical and Experimental Research", "Asia Pacific Media Educator", "Athens Journal of Education", "BMC Medical Education", "Bioscience Education", "British Journal of Educational Technology", "Cbe Life Sciences Education", "Ceur Workshop Proceedings", "Changing English Studies in Culture and Education", "Computer Applications in Engineering Education", "E-Learning and Digital Media", "Educational Review", "Engineering Education", "Epileptic Disorders International Epilepsy Journal with*

*Videotape", "Frontiers in Psychology", "Health Information and Libraries Journal", "Innovation inthe European Journal of Social Science Research", "Innovations in Education and Teaching International", "International Journal for Academic Development", "International Journal of Pharmacy Practice", "International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning", "Italics Innovations in Teaching and Learning in Information and Computer Sciences", "Journal of Chemical Education", "Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing", Journal of Criminal Justice Education", "Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management", Journal of Information Literacy", "Journal of Information Technology Education Research", "Journal of Music Technology and Education", "Journal of Physics Conference Series", "Journal of School Health", "Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice", "Journal of Veterinary Medical Education", "Man in India", "Medical Science Educator", "Nurse Education Today", "On the Horizon", "Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery United States", "Proceedings Frontiers in Education Conference", "Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work", "Qualitative Inquiry", "Qualitative Research Journal", "Revista De Ciencias Sociales", "Revista De Estudos Da Linguagem", "Surgery United States", "Teaching and Learning Inquiry", "Technological Forecasting and Social Change", "Transactions on Maritime Science", "Transformation in Higher Education", "Ubiquitous Learning", "Voprosy Obrazovaniya Educational Studies Moscow", and "World Sustainability Series*".

The next aspect looked at was the results of publications by affiliation for the research on "teaching AND higher AND education AND academy AND online AND learning OR COVID-19", as represented in Figure 8. It can be observed that the highest amount of publications by affiliation was two publications. These affiliations were "*Emory University", "Arizona State University", "Katurba Medical College", "Manipal Academy of Higher Education", "Appalachian State University", "University of California", "University of Wisconsin", "Columbia University", "Stanford University", and "Russian Presidential Academy of Economy and Public Administration*". It was followed by a set of affiliations that produced one publication, which included "*University of Illinois", "Loughborough University", "University of Northumbria", "University of Worchester", "Tel Aviv University", "University College London", "Trop University", "University of Sussex", "Duke University", "Louisiana State University", "Solent University", "Coventry University", "Kings College London", "The Open University", "University of Glasgow", "University of Tampa", "University of Sheffield", and "Nelson Mandela University*". These affiliations are from different locations, which shows that research on education with an emphasis on teaching in higher education academies is being conducted globally. However, the rates of production are not very high, which could imply low funding in this research area.

The last parameter looked at is the author keywords from the search using data retrieved from Scopus. It was identified that the most frequent keywords in the corpus for the word cloud using Voyant tools were *"learning (47)"; "education (44)"; "online (27)"; "teaching (20)"; "higher (15)".* This can be identified in the word cloud depicted in Figure 9, which was developed using 808 words and 400 unique word forms. From the cirrus on Voyant tools, the word cloud was generated and identified to have a vocabulary density of 0.495, a readability index of 30.999, and an average word per sentence of 808.0. Using the most frequent words, a trend was identified as depicted in Figure 10, showing that learning is the keyword with the highest relative frequency.

### **4. Annotated Bibliography**

In this section, the annotated bibliography on teaching in Higher Education Academies (HEA) is presented in this paper based on different frameworks of sustainable education. One of the key findings is the adjustments that were made with the intention of creating and promoting accessible education, involving the use of resources and tactics that were methodologically diverse during COVID-19. One of the most significant tools for school reform today in response to the recent COVID-19 pandemic is blended learning, which combines the advantages of face-to-face and technologically assisted learning. With blended learning, there are significantly more opportunities for teachers and students to comprehend how we send and receive information, engage with others in educational

settings, acquire knowledge, and evaluate what we have taught or learned. Tables 1–6 present different publications listed and classified based on different categories by themes.


**Table 1.** Some studies related to the literature review on teaching in HEAs.


**Table 2.** Some studies related to the online learning, e-learning, and blended learning.

### **Table 2.** *Cont.*


**Table 3.** Some studies related to the teachers' training, professional development, and teachers' satisfaction.


### **Table 3.** *Cont.*



### **Table 4.** Some studies related to student assessment and school curriculum.


**Table 5.** Some studies related to digital literacy and social media for education.

### **Table 5.** *Cont.*


### **Table 6.** Some studies related to student engagement and student motivation.


### **Table 6.** *Cont.*


### **5. Conclusions**

In this paper, a scientific review and an annotated bibliography on teaching in Higher Education Academies (HEA) are presented with their frontiers towards sustainable education. Literature on teaching styles, student assessments, online learning, adaptation to the COVID-19 pandemic, and e-learning was presented. To also create a better understanding on the methodology, some related annotated bibliographies and scientific reviews were also presented. However, some aspects of teaching such as inclusive learning, reflective comments, reflective thinking, and reflective behaviours of teaching were not included in this paper. The scope of this paper is diverse as seen in the section titles for the main topics covered in this paper, however, it has been streamlined to enable readers to find the references easily. These collected literature examples with the summaries and some reflections help professors, educators, teachers, students, postgraduate researchers, laboratory demonstrators, teaching assistants, and workshop tutors to have a quick view of related literature in the subject area to improve their teaching skills and reflect better on their teaching methods. The literature used for the annotated bibliography shows that teachers' actions might influence students' learning activities. The limitations of the research include the database used, due to the use of only Scopus database and the choice of keywords, some relevant recent literature could be missed out from the batch. It should be noted that the Scopus database was selected because it has a broader range of coverage, it is faster in the index process, and it has more recent publications from the literature search [143–145].

The scientific review and scientometric analysis conducted were used to understand the research pattern in this area. It is evident that there are key indicators that affect the research pattern on teaching in HEAs. Based on the publication records from 2003 to mid-2022, it was observed that different global occurrences could have affected the research trends noticed in this subject area, such as the 2008 global economic recession, the 2016 drop in oil price, and the COVID19 pandemic that hit the global world in 2020.With the increase in online learning, publications with the highest publications were produced in the U.S.A. Also, it was evident that the U.S.A. and the U.K., are the top two developedcountries that make significant investments in educational research as shown in the study. Also, the study shows that the most publications on this subject area were available as articles or journal papers. Using the most frequent words, a trend was identified showing that learning is the keyword with the highest relative frequency. Therefore, future research can include an annotated biography on teaching in HEAs with themes such as student assessment, diversity, teaching pedagogy, and group learning included. Also, detailed scientific literature reviews can be conducted on teaching in HEAs using other search database.

**Supplementary Materials:** The supplementary data used in the study is uploaded herewith. The following supporting information can be downloaded at: Amaechi, Chiemela Victor (2022), "Data on Scientometrics of Teaching in HEA and adapting to COVID-19 (online learning)- Paper 1", *Mendeley Data*, V1, https://doi.org/10.17632/7mmwpvxtwr.1.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, C.V.A., and I.M.K.; methodology, C.V.A.; software, C.V.A.; validation, C.V.A., E.C.A., A.K.O. and I.M.K.; formal analysis, C.V.A. and I.M.K.; investigation, C.V.A. and I.M.K.; resources, C.V.A.; data curation, C.V.A.; writing—original draft preparation, C.V.A.; writing—review and editing, C.V.A., E.C.A., A.K.O. and I.M.K.; visualization, C.V.A., E.C.A., A.K.O. and I.M.K.; supervision, C.V.A.; project administration, C.V.A.; funding acquisition, C.V.A. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by Lancaster University: Engineering Department Studentship Award; Niger Delta Development Commission (NG): NDDC Overseas Postgraduate Scholarship; Standards Organisation of Nigeria (NG): SON Study; Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UK): EPSRC's Doctoral Training Centre (DTC); Tertiary Education Trust Fund (NG): TET-FUND. The financial support received for the doctoral research conducted along with which this study was carried out are highly appreciated.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** The data supporting the reported results cannot be shared at this time, but some data are shared as supplementary data, while others are used to produce some related publications on this study.

**Acknowledgments:** The authors acknowledge the librarians of Lancaster University for the support in providing requested publications. The authors also acknowledge the teaching certifications and training received from the Organisation and Education Development (OED), Lancaster University, UK during the Associate Teaching Programme (ATP), and the fellowship of Higher Education Academy (HEA), UK. Also, the feedback received from the reviewers to improve the quality of this paper is well appreciated.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; and in the writing of the manuscript or in the decision to publish the results.

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