An examination of mobile learning adoption in higher education: Research trends in twenty years

Abstract

Mobile learning presents many benefits to lecturers, students, and universities. It provides the opportunity for all to access information anytime and anywhere and also promotes learning autonomy and mobility. This paper aims to systematically analyze publications on mobile learning in higher education conducted over twenty years by providing knowledge to help researchers in this area. The data were obtained from the Scopus database. A total of 587 peer-reviewed publications were analyzed. The results show that the number of articles increased significantly after 2016, and there was an upward trend after 2018. Our results regarding prolific journals show that many articles in this field were published in several prominent journals. Our results revealed that 91 countries contributed to research worldwide, and the most productive institutions are from different continents. In addition, results indicated that recently published countries on the topic are India, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Germany. Regarding research trends, our results yielded three research clusters. The first cluster focused on building a learning environment for students, while the second cluster included research on mobile learning in medical education. In addition, the third cluster investigated young adults’ use and perceptions of mobile phones in learning through surveys and questionnaires. Moreover, the results we obtained demonstrated that recent studies also focused on academic performance and augmented reality was a trending topic before academic performance.