A meta systematic review of artificial intelligence in higher education: a call for increased ethics, collaboration, and rigour

Abstract

Although the field of Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIEd) has a substantial history as a research domain, never before has the rapid evolution of AI applications in education sparked such prominent public discourse. Given the already rapidly growing AIEd literature base in higher education, now is the time to ensure that the field has a solid research and conceptual grounding. This review of reviews is the first comprehensive meta review to explore the scope and nature of AIEd in higher education (AIHEd) research, by synthesising secondary research (e.g., systematic reviews), indexed in the Web of Science, Scopus, ERIC, EBSCOHost, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect and ACM Digital Library, or captured through snowballing in OpenAlex, ResearchGate and Google Scholar. Reviews were included if they synthesised applications of AI solely in formal higher or continuing education, were published in English between 2018 and July 2023, were journal articles or full conference papers, and if they had a method section 66 publications were included for data extraction and synthesis in EPPI Reviewer, which were predominantly systematic reviews (66.7%), published by authors from North America (27.3%), conducted in teams (89.4%) in mostly domestic-only collaborations (71.2%). Findings show that these reviews mostly focused on AIHEd generally (47.0%) or Profiling and Prediction (28.8%) as thematic foci, however key findings indicated a predominance of the use of Adaptive Systems and Personalisation in higher education. Research gaps identified suggest a need for greater ethical, methodological, and contextual considerations within future research, alongside interdisciplinary approaches to AIHEd application. Suggestions are provided to guide future primary and secondary research.

Re‐imagining ‘openness’ in Review of Education: Methodological standards, open science, and nurturing the next generation of researchers

“…We aim to further develop the RoE into a premier educational research journal that publishes methodologically rigorous and innovative types of evidence syntheses (see, e.g., Sutton et al, 2019) by introducing further guidance for researchers to ensure transparent and robust methodological practices. We will produce more detailed methodological and best practice recommendations, to complement and expand upon existing guidance (e.g., Khalil et al, 2024) and research into reporting quality within educational research (Bond et al, 2024;Buntins et al, 2023), together with examples of how to conduct various types of evidence syntheses for authors. These guidelines will be based upon established methodological practices that are recognised internationally (e.g., Page et al, 2021).…”

“…It is our hope that the journal can become an advocate of open science practices including protocol (pre-)registration, open materials (e.g., providing questionnaires or interview questions used), and open data (e.g., full transparency of coding in reviews; see Bond et al, 2024 for an example). We are currently considering displaying Open Science Badges (Centre for Open Science, 2024) on the journal's website and award badges to submissions that follow these practices.…”

Generative AI for Customizable Learning Experiences

“…In this paper, we aim to take a step in that direction by proposing a sustainable solution for making education more engaging for everyone through generative AI. Furthermore, Bond et al [29], in the recent systematic review of artificial intelligence in higher education, stated that available literature on how AI is used at the postgraduate level remains limited, besides the fast development of AI models, tools, and solutions. This paper is a step forward in overcoming this limitation.…”

The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Creation of Future Education: Possibilities and Challenges

“…It is necessary to state that in the United States AI is extensively used to create educational games and simulations that engage students and help them learn through interactive experiences. Also, a number of works are related to the necessity of ethics and international collaboration in the field of using AI (Bond et al, 2024).…”