A comprehensive overview of artificial intelligence and machine learning in education pedagogy: 21 Years (2000–2021) of research indexed in the scopus database

The utilization of AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) in education pedagogy will undoubtedly enhance transformative changes in academic pedagogical engagements. Most interestingly, they are perceived to transform traditional instructional activities into digitized and seamless ones for effective and efficient education. To further explore the discourse, this study tries to elucidate the dramatic rise in trends and the constant evolution of AI and ML in education pedagogy applying a bibliometrics analysis. Historically, since the emergence of AI, its influence, functions, and applications have been transcending from one form to another in the sequence of artificial intelligence (simple level of AI) to applied artificial intelligence, to machine learning, and to deep learning. From our study outcome, numerous scholars predicted that AI and ML will continue to transform beyond their current state to more sophisticated tools. A bibliometric analysis was performed with the extracted articles on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and education pedagogy from the Scopus database. The downloaded data were analyzed with bibliometrics research tools such as VOSviewer (Var 1.6.6) and R packages. For this study exploration, a total of one thousand, one hundred and thirty-eight (1138) documents were authored by two thousand, eight hundred (2800) researchers and published in six-hundred and thirty-five (635) journals from 2000 to 2021, with 5.984 as the average citations per document from sixty-two (62) countries. Our study concluded that school administrators should promote the use of AI and ML devices to promote quality pedagogical services in the academic environment. Most especially, education policymakers are advised to promulgate policies that will support the acceptability and usability of artificial intelligence and machine learning in academic environment.