A Comparative Study of Chinese and Foreign Research on the Internet of Things in Education: Bibliometric Analysis and Visualization

Known as the third revolution of information technology, the Internet of Things (IoT) embodies the transformation of human technology from “virtual” to “reality”. The application of IoT in education has risen the concerns of both researchers and practitioners. However, there are few research on using bibliometric to visually analyze the hotspots and trends of the IoT in education. In this study, a total of 2257 articles, including (1) 1243 domestic articles from 2005 to 2021; (2) 1014 foreign articles from 2005 to 2021, were collected for comparative analysis between China and foreign countries using the visualization software CiteSpace. The results show that authoritative journals both at home and abroad have paid varying degrees of attentions to the basic theories, emerging technologies and applications of IoT in education. The number of research literatures on this topic is generally increasing year by year. It is particularly worth mentioning that in the field of the IoT in education, on the one hand, the United States, China and Spain are the top three major countries actively participate in, and their international academic cooperation is relatively close; on the other hand, the main research findings are concentrated in the northern and eastern hemispheres, while there is less distributed in the southern and western hemispheres. Regrading research directions, on the whole, much attention has been paid to the construction of smart learning environment; to be specific, its research focus has shifted to the deep integration of intelligent technology and education (e.g., learning feedback supported by IoT technology is delivered to student with the purpose of improving teaching effect). However, in general, the application of IoT in education is still in its infancy, and the scope of practical application is relatively limited. Therefore, future research will concentrate on construction of smart education environment, curriculum teaching and data-driven education evaluation, in order to inaugurate a new situation capable of carrying out experimental teaching, presenting abstract concepts and connecting realistic situations