A Review of Smart Education Practices Across Disciplines

Smart education has become a prevalent way of education delivery to enhance learning effectiveness and efficiency in the digital age. Despite smart education being implemented in a widening range of disciplines, there has been a lack of comprehensive analysis on the disciplinary variation of smart education practices. This paper presents a review of the disciplinary contexts of smart education practices, covering a total of 110 studies collected from Scopus and published from 2010 to 2022. The studies were analysed in terms of the learning modes, techniques, and devices utilised in four disciplinary categories, i.e., hard-pure, soft-pure, hard-applied, and soft-applied, under Biglan’s classification. The results show that 15 disciplines were involved in smart education practices, among which language and computer science were the two most frequently reported. In regards to disciplinary categories, smart education has been practiced most frequently in hard-applied disciplines, and least in hard-pure disciplines. Three major modes of learning were identified, with face-to-face learning accounting for the largest proportion, followed by online learning and blended leaning. Learning platforms/management systems and mobile devices were predominantly used in the practices. These findings provide a comprehensive overview of smart education practices within various subjects. They contribute to informing the implementation of smart education in relation to the nature of disciplines, as well as directions for future research on this topic.