Comparison Research of Hotspots and Trends of Learning Analytics from 2011-2021: A Visualization Analysis Based on CiteSpace

Abstract

With the development of big data and social informatization, learning analytics became a popular topic in education and received more and more attention from scholars. In order to explore the similarities and differences of learning analytics between home and abroad, CiteSpace was used to compare and analyze 178 articles from the CNKI database and 1056 articles from the WOS database from 2011 to 2021. Hotspots, trends, frontiers of domestic and foreign research in learning analytics were visually analyzed. The findings show that: 1) The number of international publications was higher than that of Chinese publications from 2011 to 2021; 2) While more teacher education universities focus on the field of learning analytics in China, comprehensive universities pay more attention to the topic from the result of international publications. 3) Online learning is a key research area for learning analytics research, both in China and in other countries. 4) The research frontier of learning analytics in China mainly focused on learning prediction, while the research frontier in the international articles mainly focused on “educational data mining”, “big data”, and “the design of learning environments and tools”. The analysis captures the hotspots, trends, frontiers in the field of learning analytics and provides a reference for further research by scholars at home and abroad.