The purpose of this study is to examine the publications conducted in education related to virtual worlds with the bibliometric analysis method. This study employed the appropriate keywords determined via digging the Web of Science database. A total of 2,978 publications meeting the criteria of the current study were examined. VOSviewer software was used for the analysis. We utilized co-authorship analysis to see the descriptive characteristics of the examined publications. The most conducted type was proceedings and the number of publications fluctuated over time with a peak in 2012. England, USA, and Spain had the most publications among the countries, and Open University, Coventry University, and the Polytechnic University of Bucharest had the most publications among the organizations. The majority of the studies were published in the journal of Computers & Education, British Journal of Educational Technology, and Interactive Learning Environments. For revealing the most common keywords, we used the co-occurrence analysis. “e-learning”, “second life” and “higher education” were the most occurred keywords in the publications. The citations analysis was used to see which authors and publications were mostly cited in the examined papers. The most cited authors were Dede, C., Lan, Y. and Ketelhut, D. J. According to the analysis of the cited references, Dalgarno and Lee, (2010), Merchant, Goetz, Cifuentes, Keeney-Kennicutt, and Davis, (2014) and Dunleavy et al. (2008) were the most cited studies. Technological developments have affected the interest in the use of VWs in education. As a new type or extension of virtual worlds, metaverse promises new opportunities in education. The findings of this study would present a road map for those future research to see the general picture of the relevant area.

The computer science (CS) unplugged approach intends to teach CS concepts and computational thinking skills without employing any digital tools. The current study conducted a systematic literature review to analyze research studies that conducted investigations related to implementations of CS unplugged activities. A systematic review procedure was developed and applied to detect and subsequently review relevant research studies published from 2010 to 2019. It was found that 55 research studies (17 articles + 38 conference proceedings) satisfied the inclusion criteria for the analysis. These research studies were then examined with regard to their demographic characteristics, research methodologies, research results, and main findings. It was found that the unplugged approach was realized and utilized differently among researchers. The majority of the studies used the CS unplugged term when referring to “paper–pencil activities,” “problem solving,” “storytelling,” “games,” “tangible programming,” and even “robotics.”

Computer assisted instruction is one of most applied methods in mathematics education In this study, a systematic literature review was conducted in the field of Computer Assisted Mathematics Instruction to reveal the recent tendency by examining the articles of journals originated in Turkey between 2015 and 2019. At the end of the two-phased selection method, 39 articles were reviewed in the current study. Demographic and methodological characteristics of articles as well as their topics and the applied technology were investigated. It was found that the number of articles was decreased in 2017 from the beginning, however, it has been increasing in the recent years. Articles were generally conducted by two authors and their data were collected mostly in Central Anatolian Region. They were distributed equally across the research design and mostly conducted with pre-service teachers. The sample size of the articles was mostly between 31 and 50. The instruments and analysis used in the articles were mentioned in the related sections. Geogebra, Cabri and Geometer's Sketchpad were the frequently used software as the computer assisted technology in the articles. Their distribution across the topic and sample size were addressed. The results of this study would be beneficial for researchers to see the current tendency and for practitioners who want to use a technology in mathematics education.

Usability is an important term for systems related to learning and teaching because usability issues can negatively affect student achievement. The aim of this study is to investigate the usability of a specific online examination system, OSSI, which is used by a public university for midterm and final exams. Researchers examined mean differences between System Usability Scale (SUS) scores of students from different departments with different usage frequencies. Usability issues were investigated by gathering students' ideas. Both quantitative and qualitative data procedures were employed. Quantitative data were analyzed through analysis of variance, while content analysis was applied to qualitative data. Scores showed no statistical mean difference between usage frequencies but did show a statistically significant mean difference between CEIT and other two departments. Qualitative analysis revealed the importance of screen size, placement of buttons, question formatting, and other screen elements. The results of this study contribute to the design and development of OSSI and other online examination systems.

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