M-learning and Augmented Reality: A Review of the Scientific Literature on the WoS Repository

Abstract

Augmented reality emerges as a tool, on which it is necessary to examine its real educational value. This paper shows the results of a bibliometric analysis performed on documents collected from the Web of Science repository, an Internet service that concentrates bibliographic information from more than 7,000 institutions. Our analysis included an overall universe of 12,000 indexed journals and 148,000 conference proceedings. From those, we selected a sample targeting the terms “mobile-learning” or “m-learning” and “augmented reality” as descriptors or components of titles of scientific works. The analysis on journals (n=741) and in conference proceedings (n=913) reveals a differentiated perspective in each area in the last two years. A qualitative ana¬lysis of 67 scientific productions addressing these subjects complements the research. This highlights five themes: conceptualization of the phenomenon, development of new methodologies, motivation, spatial delocalization, and implementation in subject-matter areas. The research highlights logical changes, such as greater and differentiated access to information; transcendent innovations, such as increasing informal and ludic activities, insertion into virtual environments, membership of specific groups, and networks of friendly interaction, along creation of new scales of values. These elements are now beginning to constitute fundamental parts of teaching methodologies. Education appears to be subsidiary to technical advances, thus imposing a drastic methodological change..