Learning From the Past: An Educational Technology Content Analysis

Professional journals in educational technology provide a leadership role in the understanding and development of knowledge pertaining to educational technology. This paper discusses the results of a content analysis to identify research trends in educational technology over a four year period, 2005 – 2008. A total of 1783 articles were reviewed from 12 leading, peer-reviewed educational technology journals. Each article was analyzed to determine the populations studied, prevalent topic areas, methodologies employed, common research foci, and research study results. This paper provides an overview of the content analysis with an emphasis on the findings of four years of research studies and a discussion of the lessons learned from the major researchers in the field