April 2012 Volume 15 Number 2 - Educational Technology & Society

knowledge representations were associated with different domains or disciplines. As a result, different instructional
methods embedded in the media presentation are necessary to be adapted for efficiently represent the information,
which should compensate the learners’ cognitive representations. The assertion may help explain our current findings
that the TBL researchers gradually target their research interests into specific learning domains for utilizing the
instructional methods with the supported technologies. For instance, the computer-supported collaborative learning
and group discussion may be applied as major instructional methods in the social studies learning domain; welldesigned
platforms or learning systems may be crucial to enhance arts and language learning. Moreover, these
findings also infer that TBL implementation is not a domain-general task. In the last decade, studies in “Policies,
social culture impacts and trends for technology-enhanced learning” seemed to provide essential guidelines or
domain-general solutions for TBL practices. However, based on the current findings, it is predicted that adopting
technologies in different domains will be a trend and also a challenge for the schools to face (Johnson, Levine,
Smith, & Stone, 2010). Policy administrators, educators, or system developers need to carefully examine the specific
TBL issues in different learning domains and provide the necessary support for future TBL development.
Conclusion
The present study examines the technology-based learning research trends between 2000 and 2009 from five major
journals. Within this decade, TBL research trend has evolved from technology comparison to TBL-related
pedagogical design theory development, from learners’ motivational issues to the teachers’, from Internet or learning
system-based TBL to individualized and universal learning experiences, and from domain-general considerations to
domain-specific advertency. The analysis shows that TBL context has become a common setting that educators are
expected to deliver their instructions via technologies no matter to which learning groups or in which academic
domains. Thus, policy makers and administrators should allocate more efforts and resources to develop better TBL
implementation plans for the academy. For example, teacher education or training program should educate the
teachers how the technologies should be used to enhance learners’ cognitive engagement and to represent good
quality of TBL instructions. The recent development of TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge,
Chai et al., 2010, 2011) model in helping teachers to design TBL-based curricular has started responding to such
demand and inquiry.
Finally, this study excludes the relevant conference proceedings and other TBL related journals (e.g., IEEE
publications) for analysis. It is suggested that future research should expand the data sources for more deliberate
analysis. Additionally, this study is limited in including the relevant research in year 2010 for only providing a
complete review of the TBL studies for a decade (2000-2009). Future research is encouraged to conduct similar
studies with more current information and research data.
Acknowledgements
Funding for this research work is supported by the National Science Council, Taiwan, under grant numbers NSC 99-
2631-S-011 -001, 100-2911-I-011-502, and 100-2911-I-110-503.
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