Abstract:

Nowadays higher education and especially universities deal with an extensive range of challenges. Students’ inclusion and satisfaction as well as educational quality and efficiency are main aspects of interest. These objectives are called to respond to increased dropout rates, and the ineffectiveness of a traditional “one-size-fits-all” approach to education. Educational efficiency significantly depends on the cooperation and communication of students and instructors. Institutions are called to make decisions on all aspects of the provided courses from design to implementation. In this context, multicriteria analysis is implemented throughout this educational process to provide the best end result for the students and educators. In the context of the current study, Distance Education is the focus of the research. It is generally accepted that Distance Education is sustainable and flexible and therefore, it is capable to accommodate the needs and timetable of the students and educators, without compromising the teaching and learning experience, quality and efficiency. The current study provides an extensive literature review focusing on multicriteria analysis and its applications in the field education in general and more specifically in distance education. The investigation took place mainly through Scopus database and covered all years reaching up to 2023. The literature review investigation, after a focused screening, returned 177 documents. These were recorded in a Mendeley database. Literature review highlighted that multicriteria analysis is widely used in all aspects of education and especially in distance education, which is the theme of the current paper. Multicriteria decision analysis is implemented in all stages of realization of a distance education system. It successfully enabled decision makers and distance education stakeholders to make educated decisions regarding organization and operation of online learning courses. Furthermore, a bibliometric analysis has taken place, through the use of VOS-viewer, and identified fundamentals concepts that are representative of the association of multicriteria analysis to distance learning. The analysis has highlighted Analytic Hierarchy Process, Goal Programming and Resource Allocation as a number of core concepts.

Keywords:

Distance Education, Multicriteria Analysis, VOS-viewer.