The Metaverse has been the centre of attraction for educationists for quite some time. This field got renewed interest with the announcement of social media giant Facebook as it rebranding and positioning it as Meta. While several studies conducted literature reviews to summarize the findings related to the Metaverse in general, no study to the best of our knowledge focused on systematically summarizing the finding related to the Metaverse in education. To cover this gap, this study conducts a systematic literature review of the Metaverse in education. It then applies both content and bibliometric analysis to reveal the research trends, focus, and limitations of this research topic. The obtained findings reveal the research gap in lifelogging applications in educational Metaverse. The findings also show that the design of Metaverse in education has evolved over generations, where generation Z is more targeted with artificial intelligence technologies compared to generation X or Y. In terms of learning scenarios, there have been very few studies focusing on mobile learning, hybrid learning, and micro learning. Additionally, no study focused on using the Metaverse in education for students with disabilities. The findings of this study provide a roadmap of future research directions to be taken into consideration and investigated to enhance the adoption of the Metaverse in education worldwide, as well as to enhance the learning and teaching experiences in the Metaverse.

Instructional feedback has the power to enhance learning. However, learners do not always feel satisfied with their feedback experience. Simultaneously, little attention has been paid on investigating how feedback is implemented in online competency-based learning (CBL). CBL is an approach under which learning activities are organized in a non-linear manner to help learners achieve pre-defined competencies. This study applied a multiple case study method, and 17,266 pieces of the coded feedback text, given by instructors for three learning tasks from a blended undergraduate course, were analyzed. The results showed that instructors implemented 11 types of feedback. Feedback that was used to give praise was less effective, but was frequently used. Regulative feedback and emotional feedback can be very effective, but they were actually rarely used. Feedback for diagnosis, suggesting improvements, and praise was frequently and consistently used across tasks with different complexity. In contrast, feedback used for complementary teaching and time management, as well as emotional feedback were rarely used. Based on the obtained findings, the potential causes and suggestions for improving feedback implementation were discussed.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the need for new innovative methods to effectively maintain education in times of crisis and uncertainty. This study first presents the Online-Merge-Offline (OMO) learning approach, a way of learning that caters to the new needs of students and teachers in the post-COVID-19 era. OMO learning utilizes a hybrid infrastructure that combines Open Educational Practices and real-time learning spaces, both online and offline. This study then discusses the early results of a pilot experiment investigating OMO learning in China for three months from three dimensions: space design requirements, technological considerations, and pedagogical considerations. A qualitative, two-stage study focused on content analysis and a multiple-case study were carried out in the context of courses about English language learning with 30 teachers and students. The obtained findings showed that, although both teachers and students had a positive attitude towards OMO learning, they mentioned that a comprehensive set of core and functional competencies are needed—including the use of online platforms, communication skills, class management, and the effective use of resources. Additionally, the findings showed that more effort should be paid to classroom design, such as infrastructure, to efficiently support OMO learning. This study exemplifies a new approach toward the future of education to ensure sustainable education in this complex and uncertain world.

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Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) have a great potential to effectively transform teaching and learning. As more efforts have been put on designing and developing ITSs and integrating them within learning and instruction, mixed types of results about the effectiveness of ITS have been reported. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate how ITSs work in real and natural educational contexts and the associated challenges of ITS application and evaluation. Through a systematic literature review method, this study analyzed 40 qualified studies that applied social experiment methods to examine the effectiveness of ITS during 2011–2022. The obtained results highlighted a complicated landscape regarding the effectiveness of ITS in real educational contexts. Specifically, there was an “intelligent” regional gap regarding the distribution of countries where ITS studies using social experiment methods were conducted. Compared to learning performance, relatively less attention was paid to investigating the impact of ITS on non-cognitive factors, process-oriented factors, and social outcomes, calling for more research in this regard. Considering the complexities and challenges existing in real educational fields, there was a lack of scientific rigor in terms of experimental design and data analysis in some of the studies. Based on these findings, suggestions for future study and implications were proposed.