Collaborations, concepts, and citations in educational technology: A trend study via bibliographic mapping

Abstract

Research trends studies have emerged in education technologies (ET) to determine research manner and changes. Although the precedent examples dated back to the 1950s, trend studies within ET have gradually been increasing since the 1970s. This study aimed to examine the ET publications and research trends in a 5-year time period from 2014 to 2018. With a bibliographic mapping tool, namely VOSviewer, three research questions were addressed relating to collaborations, concepts, and citations in educational technology studies. The data set was extracted from ISI Web of Science databases and included 1690 articles published in six educational technology journals between 2014 and 2018. We used co-authorship analysis to determine the collaborating researchers' institutions and their geographical locations (countries) when they published the articles. A co-occurrence analysis was used to investigate concepts. Finally, a co-citation analysis was employed to determine the most cited papers and journals. Co-authorship analyses revealed that the number of articles published by researchers affiliated with institutions in the USA was the highest in the data set. According to co-occurrence analysis, online learning, especially in open learning environments, was the most studied concept. Moreover, co-citation analysis showed that the most frequently cited articles were published in Computers & Education. Additional findings, discussion, and limitations of the study were explained in the full text.