The Use of Virtual Worlds in the Field of Education: A Bibliometric Study

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the publications conducted in education related to virtual worlds with the bibliometric analysis method. This study employed the appropriate keywords determined via digging the Web of Science database. A total of 2,978 publications meeting the criteria of the current study were examined. VOSviewer software was used for the analysis. We utilized co-authorship analysis to see the descriptive characteristics of the examined publications. The most conducted type was proceedings and the number of publications fluctuated over time with a peak in 2012. England, USA, and Spain had the most publications among the countries, and Open University, Coventry University, and the Polytechnic University of Bucharest had the most publications among the organizations. The majority of the studies were published in the journal of Computers & Education, British Journal of Educational Technology, and Interactive Learning Environments. For revealing the most common keywords, we used the co-occurrence analysis. “e-learning”, “second life” and “higher education” were the most occurred keywords in the publications. The citations analysis was used to see which authors and publications were mostly cited in the examined papers. The most cited authors were Dede, C., Lan, Y. and Ketelhut, D. J. According to the analysis of the cited references, Dalgarno and Lee, (2010), Merchant, Goetz, Cifuentes, Keeney-Kennicutt, and Davis, (2014) and Dunleavy et al. (2008) were the most cited studies. Technological developments have affected the interest in the use of VWs in education. As a new type or extension of virtual worlds, metaverse promises new opportunities in education. The findings of this study would present a road map for those future research to see the general picture of the relevant area.