Trends in educational technology research: Examining seamless learning, metaverse and educational robotics

Abstract

Technology in education offers significant opportunities for innovation, particularly in the design of transformative and engaging learning activities. Prominent approaches in the field of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) include seamless learning, metaverse education and educational robotics, which together have potential to drive advances in education. This study employs bibliometric literature review to explore the potential of metaverse technologies and educational robotics in supporting seamless flow of learning across various contexts. Through keyword co-occurrence analysis, key themes, emerging trends and connections between these areas are identified. The findings highlight the central role of virtuality and artificial intelligence in enabling metaverse-based education and educational robotics. The research and development in digital twins, hybrid extended reality, immersive human-computer and human-robot interfaces, emerge as key topics in supporting seamless learning and personalized learning scenarios. This study highlights an underexplored area of aligning these technologies with pedagogical approaches, and identifies the need for the development of systems and data management approaches for seamless learning with the metaverse and robotics at a more general learner population level.