Sustainable Smart Education Through Mobile Students’ Eyes: A Bidirectional Importance–Performance Analysis of Educational Technology Importance and Satisfaction Among Inbound and Outbound International Students

This study compares what internationally mobile students consider important with how satisfied they are, across both mobility directions of a single country. Using an identical 32-dimension importance–satisfaction instrument—including a six-item educational-technology subset—329 inbound international students in China were compared with 303 Chinese outbound students within a descriptive and associational design, applying Importance–Performance Analysis, non-parametric tests with false discovery rate correction, and regression and cluster-robust sensitivity checks. The central result is a contrast between divergent stated importance and convergent experienced satisfaction. Importance ratings differ significantly between the groups on 28 of 32 dimensions—technology importance is higher among inbound students (composite 4.361 vs. 4.085, p < 0.001), with the smart classroom showing the largest single contrast (4.264 vs. 3.756, p < 0.001)—whereas satisfaction differs on only 5 of 32 dimensions, and agreement that online classes will be indispensable in future study abroad is statistically indistinguishable (3.708 vs. 3.591, p = 0.094). Importance exceeds satisfaction on 31 of 32 dimensions inbound (mean gap 0.346) and on 24 of 32 dimensions outbound (mean gap 0.192). “Timely information on the university website” is the only technology item placed in the “Concentrate here” quadrant by both groups (gaps 0.505 and 0.383), making reliable digital institutional information—rather than sophisticated learning technology—the shared digital priority. Because the two samples differ in composition, between-group contrasts are interpreted as associations, not as effects of mobility direction; the technology-importance association survives adjustment for measured compositional variables (β = 0.424, p < 0.001) and institution-level cluster-robust re-estimation. These findings are relevant to sustainable smart education and SDG 4 as stakeholder-experience evidence on where digital services meet students’ stated priorities.