From web-based interaction to generative AI: two decades of research in Interactive Learning Environments (2006–2025)

Interactive learning environments encompass web-based collaboration, mobile and immersive media, adaptive systems, and generative artificial intelligence. This study examines how the research published in Interactive Learning Environments changed across two complete decades. Scopus-indexed articles and reviews were analysed using longitudinal bibliometrics, keyword co-occurrence, reference co-citation, and source-aware metadata coding. Publication growth coincided with expanding attention to immersive and AI-mediated interaction. A common distributional measure indicated greater redistribution among coded technology categories than among pedagogical categories, including in sensitivity analyses restricted by keyword availability and abstract length. These results concern metadata-visible research emphases and do not establish different rates of change in educational practice. AI-family research increasingly foregrounded dialogue, while the growth of content generation was concentrated in the generative-AI subset. Nonsignificant comparisons across other dimensions did not establish equivalence. We interpret these patterns through cumulative reconfiguration, defined as the coexistence of established research concerns with changes in the functions assigned to technological systems. This interpretation remains bounded by the journal-specific corpus, unequal metadata reporting, and the absence of independent full-text coding.