Two Decades of Artificial Intelligence in Education: Contributors, Collaborations, Research Topics, Challenges, and Future Directions

• Published in: Educational Technology ＆ Society Vol. 25; no. 1; pp. 28 - 47
• Main Authors: Chen, Xieling, Zou, Di, Xie, Haoran, Cheng, Gary, Liu, Caixia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Palmerston North International Forum of Educational Technology ＆ Society 01.01.2022; International Forum of Educational Technology & Society
• Subjects: Affective computing; Algorithms; Artificial Intelligence; artificial intelligence in education; At Risk Students; bibliometric analysis; Bibliometrics; CAI; Collaboration; Collaborative virtual environments; College Science; Computer aided testing; Computer assisted instruction; Computer Uses in Education; Conference Papers; Cooperative Learning; Customization; Data collection; Data mining; Discourse Analysis; Distance Education; Education; Educational aspects; Educational Methods; Educational Objectives; Educational Research; Educational Strategies; Educational Technology; Educational Trends; Elementary Education; Elementary Schools; Elementary Secondary Education; Emotion recognition; Forecasts and trends; Full Length Articles; In Person Learning; Individualized Instruction; Industrial Training; Influence of Technology; Information Retrieval; Instructional Innovation; Instructional Materials; Intelligent Tutoring Systems; Machine learning; Natural Language Processing; Neural networks; Pedagogy; Performance prediction; Personalized learning; Prediction; Recommender systems; research evolution; research topics; Robotics; Special Education; structural topic modeling; Teaching; Training; Trends; Tutoring; Hong Kong; Hong Kong, China; Research topics; Bibliometric analysis; Research evolution; Artificial intelligence in education; Structural topic modeling
• DOI: 10.30191/ETS.202201_25(1).0003
• ISSN: 1176-3647; 1436-4522

With the increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in education, the number of published studies in the field has increased. However, no large-scale reviews have been conducted to comprehensively investigate the various aspects of this field. Based on 4,519 publications from 2000 to 2019, we attempt to fill this gap and identify trends and topics related to AI applications in education (AIEd) using topic-based bibliometrics. Results of the review reveal an increasing interest in using AI for educational purposes from the academic community. The main research topics include intelligent tutoring systems for special education; natural language processing for language education; educational robots for AI education; educational data mining for performance prediction; discourse analysis in computer-supported collaborative learning; neural networks for teaching evaluation; affective computing for learner emotion detection; and recommender systems for personalized learning. We also discuss the challenges and future directions of AIEd.