This study systematically maps the research trends in the domain of “shadow education” over the last 40 years using metadata extracted from the SCOPUS database. The results reveal that the outputs of shadow education research have grown exponentially within the last decade. Bray and his colleagues from the University of Hong Kong, East China Normal University, and the Education University of Hong Kong have been the most prolific and influential research team. They are followed by Park and Byun from the USA, who have mostly worked on East Asian contexts. The USA, Hong Kong, South Korea, and the People’s Republic of China, have been the main sources of contributions and the University of Hong Kong has been the leading university in this field. Educational studies, economics, psychology, linguistics, and sociology have been the main disciplines researched within shadow education. Shadow education studies have revealed how shadow education can be a major instrument for maintaining and exacerbating social inequalities. They have also largely focused on the tangible (quantifiable) benefits related to improving students’ examination results. This study’s results stress the importance of regulating the private tutoring market, suggesting areas for ongoing research. © 2023 Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Since the first study on computer-mediated communication tools in support of language learning was published in 1992, asynchronous and synchronous tools have been widely adopted; however, few reviews have been conducted to explore the research status in this field. As COVID-19 has increased the use of online tools in education, the need to understand how asynchronous and synchronous tools are being used in language education has grown. In this bibliometric analysis, we reviewed asynchronous and synchronous online language learning (ASOLL) by analyzing the trends, topics, and findings of 319 articles on ASOLL. The results indicate that interest in ASOLL has increased over the past three decades with ASOLL for oral proficiency development and collaborative ASOLL being the two main research issues. Interest in three topics – collaborative ASOLL, emotions, and corrective feedback – was especially apparent. The review contributes to the understanding of ASOLL while providing practical implications for using information communication technologies to enhance language learning. Copyright © 2023 Laboratory for Knowledge Management & E-Learning, The University of Hong Kong.

BACKGROUND: Research on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIEd) has become increasingly active during the past 20 years, with great interest, rich literature, and huge diversity. The diversity in research topics and technologies keeps increasing along with the tremendous growth in the application scope of AIEd research. A comprehensive overview of this field is necessary to understand what had been concerned in AIEd research, what is going on in the field of AIEd, and what might be the future of AIEd research. METHODS: This paper combined the structural topic modeling (STM) with the bibliometric analysis to automatically identify prominent research topics from the large-scale AIEd literature in the past two decades. Specifically, by using STM, we uncovered important research topics concerned within the AIEd community. The evolution of these topics was explored by using a nonparametric Mann-Kendall (MK) trend test. In addition, the correlation between these topics was further explored and visualized based on a semi-parametric Gaussian procedure. RESULTS: The annual trend of publications concerning AIEd had grown consistently across the past 20 years, indicating that research on AIEd had received a growing interest from academia Analyses on topical trends, correlations, and clusters reveal distinct developmental trends of these topics and promising research orientations. Specifically, the top six topics having the highest proportions in the dataset were cognition and perception, programming education, prediction, MOOCs, semantic Web and recommender systems, assessment and feedback, and emotion detection. Results of the MK test highlighted five topics receiving an increase in research interest, including prediction, assessment and feedback, flipped classroom and biosignal data, STEM education, and English language learning. In addition, several inter-topic research directions were identified, including 1) flipped classroom and biosignal data, emotion detection, and