Research trends in mobile and ubiquitous learning: a review of publications in selected journals from 2001 to 2010

Results of the mobile or ubiquitous learning papers analyzed by six major technology-based learning journals and published in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) database from 2001 to 2010 are presented. It was found that by dividing the past 10 years into two periods, the number of papers published during the second 5 years is four times that of the first 5 years, implying that mobile and ubiquitous learning research has greatly advanced in the recent 5 years. From 2001 to 2010, research samples in higher education were selected most, followed by elementary school students and high school students. In comparison with the studies conducted in the first 5 years, studies focused on the learning domains of engineering, arts and language, science and social science have significantly increased in the second 5 years by 10, 7, 5 and 4.5 times, respectively. Major contributing countries of mobile and ubiquitous articles in the first and the second 5 years of 2001 to 2010 are found to be the US, the UK, and Taiwan.