A Bibliometric Analysis: Metaverse in Education Concept

During the last decade technological transformation prospered, and digital environments such as Metaverse started to come to life. Metaverse is a hypothesis of the next generation of the Internet, which consists of an online 3D virtual environment and limited physical interaction. Due to the growth of Metaverse technology in various fields and the importance of using it in education, it is being observed that published research related to this topic is also growing. Therefore, the purpose is this study is to review and identify the application areas of this emerging technology for the education field by providing a bibliometric analysis of the literature related to Metaverse. This research contributes to literature as it addresses the status, gaps, and the direction for future research. In the bibliometric analysis, an electronic search was done via a scientific database named Dimensions by combining topic-related keywords for ‘metaverse’ and ‘education’ within the time frame of 2004 and 2022. The data gathered by a data extraction table from 5,048 articles retrieved and analysis run by VOSviewer data visualization tool. Of 5,048 articles found through the initial search, most of the studies (48.02%) were published in 2022, and Singapore, Japan, China, and UK are the main countries for the studies and citations appearing dominantly. The main three keywords for ‘metaverse’ and ‘education’ articles include: virtual worlds, video and metaverse platforms. The use of metaverse in education has been expanding rapidly in literature during recent years. Yet this study reveals that research is still limited to the main four countries, and studied subtopics are very primitive and vague. Available citations show weak link strength meaning the depth of the studies in the literature is not satisfactory, yet, which is because the metaverse itself is not enough without the supporting technologies. Educators and scientific researchers could rethink what types of technologies belong to the metaverse and how it has the potential to influence the education sector. Policymakers and educators could refer to this study for metaverse learning environment expansion of their future policy and executions.