Evaluating the affordance and intellectual structures of 3D virtual world language learning: a co-citation analysis

This study investigates the intellectual structure of 3D virtual world language learning (3DVWLL) by using the co-citation approach. Previous studies report the affordance regarding immersive learning experiences, communicative language strategies, and a versatile integration of digital learning materials (Lin & Lan, 2015; Reisoğlu et al., 2017; Avğousti, 2018; Wang et al. 2020). However, a unified account is still required to explain the diverse and incoherent achievements the reviews demonstrate. The objectives of the current study are two-fold. The first one serves to depict the intellectual structure of the core studies in this field. The second one is to provide pedagogical norms for language education as a resource for evaluating teaching plans when practitioners integrate 3DVWs into course designs. The methods of co-citation analysis include (i) document co-citation analysis (DCA) to identify the associations among studies within a discipline and (ii) social network analysis (SNA) to represent the complex relationships among research clusters. The results revealed a well-established intellectual structure of the 3DVWLL research field, comprising highly co-cited pairs and research clusters from 2000 to 2024. Such findings indicate high intellectual cohesion within the field, as evidenced by the cascaded linkage among issues revealed through document co-citation analysis and the primary and isolated components identified through social network analysis. To conclude, the co-citation network reveals 3DVWLL as a sustained process of technological and pedagogical advancement, underpinned by multi-layered and structurally interconnected theoretical linkages that lay the foundation for the field’s disciplinary development.