Online education has become the mainstream since the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic. This paper did a bibliographic review based on VOSviewer and CiteSpace. The author reviewed the definitions, pros and cons for teachers and students, and factors affecting the learning effectiveness of related literature. The author analyzed the mapping of countries, keywords, organizations, authors, and sources of literature about the online education during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Web of Science Core Collection database. The USA and China were the most active countries. Central China Normal University was the most productive institution. Hodges, C. B. and Garrison, D. R. were the authors most cited. Education Sciences, Education, and Information Technologies published the majority of papers. Research hotspot topics were teachers' or students' perceptions, students' satisfaction, students' performance, and students' motivation and engagement. Future educators can explore innovative theoretical paradigms and conduct relevant empirical studies in the post-pandemic era based on this research.