Current Trends (and Missing Links) in Educational Technology Research and Practice

Exploring research trends of technology use in mathematics education: A scoping review using topic modeling

This study performed a scoping review of the literature concerning the use of technology in mathematics education published between January 1981 and March 2022 to explore research trends. After the defined filtering process, we retrieved 2,433 articles from Web of Science, ERIC, and PsycInfo databases and employed Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling to extract key terms and topics from the selected articles. The analysis focused on the four aspects: (a) evolution of research trends of technology use in mathematics education, (b) frequently used words, (c) latent research topics, and (d) research trends for particular topics. The findings revealed a steady increase in research interest, and the combination of frequently used words in the article abstracts suggests popular research topics that have been studied during the set period. The results of LDA identified seven research topics that were not precisely aligned with those identified in prior studies on mathematics education or educational technology. This implied technology integration into mathematics education as a distinctive research area. Over time, the seven topics showed different research trends (stable, fluctuating, increasing, and decreasing). We discussed plausible reasons for these varied patterns and proposed implications based on the research findings.

Trends in Educational Technology: What Facebook, Twitter, and Scopus Can Tell us about Current Research and Practice

Using large-scale, public data sources, this editorial provides a high-level description of educational technology trends leading up to and encompassing the year 2020. Data sources included (a) 17.9 million Facebook page posts by K-12 educational institutions in the U.S., (b) 131,760 tweets to the #EdTech hashtag on Twitter, and (c) 29,636 educational technology articles in the Scopus database. We provide a variety of descriptive results in the form of participation frequency charts, keyword matches, URL domain link counts, co-occurring hashtags, tweet text word trees, and common word and bigram frequencies. Results from the analysis of Facebook posts indicated that (a) schools increasingly used the platform over time, (b) the pandemic increased frequency (but not the nature) of use, (c) schools are progressively sharing more media, information, and tools, and (d) some of these tools align with trends identified by Weller (2020) while others do not. Analysis of tweets indicated that (a) discussions in 2020 revolved around "remote learning" and related topics, (b) this emphasis shifted or morphed into "elearning" and "online learning" as the year progressed, (c) shared posts were primarily informational or media-based, and (d) the space was heavily directed by a relatively small group of Superusers. Last, analysis of articles in Scopus indicated that (a) online learning is historically the most-researched topic in the field, (b) the past decade reflects a shift to more "open" and "social" topics, and (c) there seems to be a lag or disconnect between emergent high-interest technologies and research. Taken together, we conclude that these results show the field's preparation for addressing many challenges of 2020, but propose that, moving forward, we would be better served by embracing greater philosophical plurality and better addressing key issues, including equity and practicality.