Twenty-five years of the Education and the Information Technologies journal: Past and future

Although it is possible to speak of information technology today, its intrinsic meaning reflects computing. The term also includes other technological devices such as multimedia, video, television, and radio. Oxford University Press defines Information Technology (IT) as “the study or use of computers, telecommunication systems, and other devices for storing, retrieving, and transmitting information” (Oxford Reference, 2021). People often use the term ‘information and communication technology’ (ICT) to mean much the same thing. The Collins English Dictionary defines ICT as “activities or studies involving computers and other electronic technology” (Collins English Dictionary, 2021).

EAIT is the official journal of the UNESCO-affiliated International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Technical Committee on Education (TC3). It was first published in 1996 and so has now seen 25 years of publications. Use of an Historical Research methodology approach to this research (Goldweber et al., 1997; Goodson & Anstead, 1992; Howell & Prevenier, 2001) allows interrogation of important article topics and trends, and consideration of the expanding cultural background of published authors. Secondary sources were also used to investigate changes in what others thought of EAIT, and included the number of article downloads (666,155 in 2020), the journals growing high Impact Factor (2.917), and inclusion in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) (Web of Science Group, 2020). These increased the journal’s attractiveness to researchers and led to more articles submitted.

In relation to Information Technologies, the journal has always attempted to cover all aspects and domains of Education. The editorial of the first issue points out that, in line with the work of IFIP TC3, the journal would cover the application of IT: “in teacher education, in curriculum and instruction for elementary and secondary education, in administration and policy making, in computer science education at the secondary and higher education levels, in research, and in the application domain of distance education” (Collis & Samways, 1996). Although the number of articles on each of these aspects has varied over the years, the range of coverage has remained wide, covering all these aspects of education.

Many of the early published articles dealt with the technology itself. For example, the first issue of Volume 1 had five articles, beginning with an article pointing out the growing worldwide use of computer networks in education and describing ‘Enlaces’ as a Chilean project involving educational computing and networking. This work was followed by an article discussing use of Audiographics as an ‘Electronic Classroom’. Next is an article investigating use of school-based microcomputers for instructional support. Another article describes AIDA, which is a 'methodology independent support tool for educational software authoring’. The fifth emphasises how it is essential for school principals to act as IT role models. Of the five articles, four deal with technology, while the last discusses people and group work with computers in schools.

It was interesting to read in the editorial of this issue (Collis & Samways, 1996) that “The journal Education and Information Technologies will not only be in paper form but will also develop an Internet available variant”. How things have changed!

Other issues in Volume 1 had articles on technology-related topics, including video, hypermedia, virtual classes, multimedia, communication, and educational software selection. However, the other topics were more people-centred, such as educational management, games, computers in the home, and the social and ethical impact of computing. Thus, the journal had, and still has, a very broad interpretation of its title. As the science of computing develops, emerging specialisations proliferate, leading to a divergence of terminology. At the inception of the journal, ‘Information Technology’ covered both the equipment, techniques and subject area. Modern terminology is currently under discussion by the international coalition ‘Informatics for All’. In their strategy paper (Caspersen et al., 2018), their definition is: “This realm of ‘digital systems’ is driven by scientific laws, as those in the realm of physical machines, which makes up the science called Informatics … [it is] also known as Computer Science or Computing in USA and elsewhere”. In Australian schools, ‘Digital Technologies’ is the name for the equivalent subject. The journal has retained its original title for consistency, but the aims expanded to include these additional terms. Likewise, Education covers all student ages, abilities, and subject content matter. The current classification scheme for reviewers and manuscripts broadly includes eight characteristics, with ‘other’ as a choice in each:

The number of academic articles published over this period has increased dramatically. For example, Volume 1 contained 15 articles; Volume 25 had 268 articles.

The journal has always ensured an international focus, with articles coming from researchers around the world. For example, in Volume 1 (1996), articles were from researchers in Australia, Canada, Chile, Finland, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Portugal, and the USA. Over the past 25 years, researchers from 97 countries have had their work published in the journal. Moreover, the range and number of countries in which this research occurred has dramatically increased over twenty-five years, as shown in Table 1 below.

Although all articles in EAIT are published in English, Table 2 shows the transition from anglophone predominance to a broader range of researcher cultural backgrounds.

The scale of international collaborations across research institutions has grown over the 25 years. Table 3 shows this by identifying articles where research organisations of co-authors based in more than one country (having eliminated multiple co-authors from the same country). Some authors submitted articles not based on a research organisation, so these are missing from the table.

This rising trend of international cooperation between co-authors provides readers with an assurance of EAIT’s global perspectives. One could only speculate how such partnerships evolved. Perhaps it was the speed or global reach of digital communications; perhaps they developed through personal meetings at international conferences. If the latter, it is possible that we will see a drop in 2020-2022 since travel has been curtailed by pandemic public health rules.

To identify trends in the journal, Table 4 shows the results from a word cloud analysis (https://​tagcrowd.​com/​) of article keywords in each demi-decade.

It is noticeable that the technology (ICT) and the age of students considered (Higher Education) have jostled for position in this keyword analysis. Methodology (case study) only made it into the top six keywords once over the 25 years, in 2001-2005. However, ‘education’ in different learning formats (collaborative learning, e-learning, distance learning, etc.) constitutes 33% of these top keywords, a healthy sign of the diversity of learning types published in EAIT. By comparison, technological items occur in 27% of the table, indicating a good mixture of this other aspect of the journal title. ‘Evaluation’ has two entries, and both ‘Teachers’ and ‘Research’ have one mention each.

There have been many changes in education over the last 25 years. Technologies that are in everyday use today were not in existence in the 1990s. Many earlier journal articles dealt with technologies such as multimedia, but this has changed as more now relate to the internet and mobile technologies. The following analyses articles published in each of the demi-decades over the journal’s 25 years of existence. It also addresses how the article types have changed. Volumes 1-20 had four issues, rising to six issues in Volumes 21-25. Overall, in the 25 years, a total of 1,415 articles were published. (This included 52 book reviews and information papers.)

There have been many changes in the field of Education and Information Technologies over the past 25 years. Firstly, there has been a flowering of research interest in the area, reflected in the number of articles published each year. Second, there has been an expansion in the number and nature of devices, software applications, and educational purposes over this period. Of note have been trends towards networked and mobile devices in the hands of learners and fusion of educational management with online learning content servers for teachers. Third, within the pages of EAIT, we have seen a gradual shift from descriptive material to highly focussed in-depth research analytics. For instance, it was not unusual in 1997 to read about computers as an experimental treatment to assist in teaching a regular topic in the school curriculum (e.g., Cox & Nikolopoulou, 1997). The methodology would be a control v. experimental group with pre/post-test comparisons. Fast-forward to 2020, and we see very detailed statistical examinations of rich data using structural equation modelling (SEM) and bootstrapping to inquire about the development of metacognitive skills (Anthonysamy, 2021). These are only examples of the increasing sophistication found in manuscripts, with perhaps more focus on humans than machines.

Based on this tabulation and analysis, what could the next decade hold? First, the recent addition of EAIT to the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) in the ‘Education & Educational Research’ category was a positive development. SSCI is part of the Web of Science, a multidisciplinary index to the journal literature of the social sciences (Web of Science Group, 2020). Furthermore, the reported high Impact Factor of EAIT in that index has dramatically increased submissions, as occurred in Volume 25.

A sneak peek into articles already published in 2021 shows – unsurprisingly – ‘COVID’ has become a ubiquitous keyword. However, going on historical trends, co-formulated by submitting authors and the editorial team who select appropriate content, we can expect a 33:33:33 mixture. Approximately one-third of the keywords have (and will probably be) education-related; another third will be technology descriptions; and the final third will be an eclectic mix of research, evaluation, neuroscience – and hopefully, efficacy/impact on learning! The technological trends are captured quite well in the Horizon Report: Trends series, which forecasts the emergence of machine learning/artificial intelligence (AI). Industrial trend reports focus on global connectivity, system resilience, trust and equity, (quantum) Artificial Intelligence (engineering), and simulations (Buchholz et al., 2020; Burke, 2020; McKinsey and Co, 2020). The rise of AI systems is epitomised by voice assistants (digital devices listen and return audio answers) and the growing size of neuro processing units in car systems-on-a-chip, which are up to three times the size of the central processing unit in some cases (Bos, 2019). In addition, greater communication bandwidth with reduced latency will provide students with excellent opportunities for virtual field trips and interaction with virtual peers combined with AI.

EAIT is very proud of all contributing authors, reviewers, publishing staff, editorial team and board, and of course, all our readers. The past 25 years have been an era of growth, more strongly in the most recent decade.

The editorial team expects continued growth in citations, journal impact factors, and international collaborations in the future. As the number of submissions also climbs, we will be more selective with manuscripts. More extensive studies with real value for a global readership are more likely to be published than small studies conducted in a single class, institution, or country. The journal is now ranked fifth in the Google Scholar rankings for Educational Technology (2022), leaving room for improvement.

There is little doubt that computers have changed education a great deal since the start of this journal in 1996. Equally, many researchers are clearly of the opinion there will be more changes in the future. Significant changes to the curriculum may be in store since all new technologies make some topics less relevant to the lives of younger citizens. EAIT will be supporting you as this happens!