The landscape of educational technology viewed from the
ETR&D journal
Yonjoo Cho, Sunyoung Park, Sung Jun Jo and Susan Suh
Yonjoo Cho (choyonj@indiana.edu) is an assistant professor of Instructional Systems Technology at Indiana Uni-
versity. She worked as an HR professional for more than ten years in business and academic sectors in South Korea
before joining the faculty at Indiana University. Her research interest centers on action learning in organizations
based on her work experience an external facilitator in large companies. Other research topics include new scholarship
in HPT and research collaboration with neighboring fields (HRD, HRM, and OD). She received her Ph.D. from the
University of Texas at Austin, USA. Sunyoung Park (sp38@indiana.edu) is a visiting scholar in Instructional
Systems Technology at Indiana University. Her research interests concern workplace learning, based on her work
experience in the field of instructional technology in South Korea. Park received her Ph.D. from the University of
Minnesota. Twin Cities, USA. Sung Jun Jo (sujo@utica.edu) is an assistant professor of Management in the
Department of Business and Economics at Utica College. He is conducting studies that apply social network analysis
method. His research topics of interest include social capital, social network, collaboration in organization, and
management history. Jo received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Susan Suh (susuh@
indiana.edu) is working as an instructional designer in a start-up company working in Seoul, South Korea. Her
research interests include human performance improvement in organizations. She received her Master’s degree from
Indiana University. Address for correspondence: Prof Yonjoo Cho, Department of Instructional Systems Technology,
Indiana University, 201 N. Rose Ave, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. Email: choyonj@indiana.edu
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to conduct a citation network analysis of Educational
Technology Research and Development (ETR&D) to examine the trends and issues of the
educational technology field’s scholarly community that have evolved in the past two
decades. The distinctive features of citation network analysis used in this study derive
from a social network analysis approach to see relational and network patterns in the
citation data. From this citation network analysis, we obtained the following results: (1)
the ETR&D network revealed structural attributes that help us understand the features
regarding how the field has developed and how scholarly works have interacted; (2) the
most influential papers and scholars in the field were identified; (3) frequently co-cited
papers were recognized as having a strong relationship by a few researchers and (4) five
cohesive subgroups (factions) generated key research themes in the field including:
instructional design, learning environments, the role of technology, educational tech-
nology research and psychological foundations. Implications and limitations of the
study were discussed for future research.
Introduction
As the educational technology (ET) field matures, we turn our attention to the literature gener-
ated by the scholarly community. Recent reviews in the field have revealed some publication
patterns of authors and institutions through citation analysis (Gall et al, 2010; Kirby, Hoadley &
Carr-Chellman, 2005; Zaugg, Amado, Small & West, 2011).
Citation analysis is quantitative analysis of the literature produced by a field and the relationships
among people as evidenced by whom they cite in their published papers (Kirby et al, 2005). Gall
et al (2010), through a citation analysis, generated a list of nine symbiotic journals (those that
British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 44 No 5 2013 677–694
doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2012.01338.x
© 2012 British Educational Research Association