A Systematic Review of Technology-Enhanced Project-Based Language Learning: Theoretical Frameworks, Project Types, and Implications for Future Research and Practice

The concept of technology-enhanced project based language learning

Technology-enhanced project-based language learning (TEPBLL) is an innovative approach to education that incorporates the use of projects in learning a second language and technology in the authentic use of the second and/or foreign language. This approach involves the use of modern technology tools and platforms to complete project-based assignments that involve the use of oral and written language, innovatively created to enable technical, collaborative, and real-life assignments (Dooly et al., 2021; Syzenko & Diachkova, 2020). TEPBLL consequently delineates the possibilities for student engagement in 21st-century knowledge, skills, and competencies in project-based language learning through technology-enhanced tasks and activities that enhance learning experiences (Dooly et al., 2021). In PBLL, the project’s objective is authentic and the target audience for its result is real because it is relevant to circumstances outside of the classroom.

This enables educators to develop engaging learning environments that enhance students’ creative thinking, innovation, problem-solving abilities, and communication skills (Sun & Yang, 2013; Syzenko & Diachkova, 2020). As a theory, TEPBLL holds that learners are more likely to acquire a second language when such learning is a by-product of the need to use a target language for meaningful tasks and purposes. Project-based language learning via technology, namely TEPBLL, allows for the effective use of technology in facilitating language acquisition which can enable students to achieve efficient verbal communication in real-life situations, as supported by Nur et al. (2022) and Syzenko & Diachkova (2020). Overall, TEPBLL is a teaching strategy that integrates technology into project-based learning environments, aimed at effectively and meaningfully improving students’ language abilities, critical thinking skills and digital literacy.

Inclusion and exclusion convention

To find relevant articles, we used the Web of Science with the following Boolean search syntax, “project-based language learning” and ‘technology’ or ‘project’ and ‘English language learning’. We used the period of interest as 2015-2024 and chose the literature source as the SSCI and found 319 articles. Four gates of exclusion criteria were initially identified. We excluded article that were: a review articles, editorials, and viewpoints; not focus on project-based language learning; not employing technology; using technology for scoring. We included articles that: were empirical studies, presented the technology integrated into project-based language learning, provided clear description of the technology used.

Coding process

Three of the researchers, employed the bottom-up approach and analyzed 31 articles using the five research questions developed for the study. I found that there were differences in the nature of publications based on the year of publication, the journal in which they were published, and whether the authors were affiliated to a university or not. The theories, techno collaborations that improved the technologies, applicability of TEPBLL, and implications were categorized as outlined in the articles. First, the relevant contents extracted from the reviewed articles were described in words; all of the following steps were taken literally: sorting all the results by similarity, which are made in order to create dataset tables (Fikria et al., 2025a) that help to summarize results. This coding strategy from the bottom up helped the researchers to reduce the interpretational biases during the study and provided a correct picture of the research studies that were reviewed. For example, to code the conceptual frameworks or the theory involved in the 31 studies the researchers took the following steps: the researchers started by reading one article at a time very carefully, noted down the conceptual frameworks or theories mentioned in the papers, combined the same concepts together, and finally prepared a list of the main conceptual frameworks and theories.

Two researchers mutually coded three articles selected at random and then discussed and compared codes and came down to fine-tune the articles until both readers had a similar understanding of the selected articles as well as the coding frame work before they were allowed to self-code the rest of the selected articles. In this process, both the researchers always remembered that which we are going to code should be the actual meanings of the articles and then they read the articles again where they simply summarized what those articles described in terms of the theoretical frameworks, technologies, research findings and implications and then only coded them. Subsequently, the labels were grouped and categorized into groups of similarity and subdivided as necessary with extra caution. For example, create VR video using presentation, practice, and production procedure (Shi et al., 2024), students determine their own project, collected data, and discussed the data (Hsieh et al., 2022), students also synthesized data and conclusions (Tanaka, 2023) were coded as a ‘student activity’. If there was any disagreement regarding some aspect of the data, an analysis of the results was conducted by discussion with the third researcher.

The nature of published research on TEPBLL

Research in technology enhanced project-based language learning has been gaining a stable trend in recent decades, and an increasing trend in 2022 ( Figure 2).

Figure 1. PRISMA 2020 flow diagram.

Figure 2. Publication date.

After analyzing the 31 articles that met the criteria, the result was described as follows: a total of 31 articles were published in 21 SSCI journals, reflecting the field’s overall publication situation ( Table 1). System had the highest number of publications (four), followed by Journal of Research on technology in Education (three), Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching (three), TESOL Quarterly (two), Australian Journal of Educational Technology (two), Education and Information Technologies (two), and the remaining 15 journals published one article each. Broadly, 87% of the articles were published in the area of Education Educational Research, 38.7% in Linguistics, only one article in Communication and one article in the area of Social Science Other Topics, showing that researchers from all four areas were capturing TEPBLL astounding.

Approximately 61% of the authors were from Asia, followed by the USA, Europe, Australia and Oceania ( Table 1). Among all affiliated regions ( Table 2), the USA and Taiwan invested almost one-fourth of the publications, while China held 16%, demonstrating the significance of these regions’ researchers on the topic. It is important to highlight that this result only reflects the state of empirical research published in SSCI-indexed journals that applied technology-enhanced project-based language learning.

Conceptual frameworks

Further analysis of the results highlighted that the study involved five major categories of theoretical frameworks or concepts, as outlined in Table 3, encompassing social constructivism, sociocultural theory, incidental vocabulary learning, communicative language learning, and self-determination theory. These categories were developed by physically taking on a piece of paper, noting the frameworks or concepts discussed in the papers, and then looking for similar sets. As mentioned earlier, there are two broad classifications of TEPBLL theory: social constructivism and sociocultural theory. According to social constructivism, learners are actively engaged in interactions as developers of knowledge (Vygotsky, 1980). When social constructivism was proposed, some of the major concepts that fell under this school of thought were virtual reality project-based learning, experiential teaching approaches, digital story-telling projects, collaborative video projects, collaborative digital writing.

Vygotsky’s social constructivism (Vygotsky, 1980), which claims that learners participate in knowledge construction through interaction with receiving assistance, was cited most often in the literature. In technology-enhanced project-based language learning, learners used technology — Virtual Reality (Chan, 2022; Lin & Wang, 2021; Shi et al., 2024; Sun Joo & Lee Jin, 2024), telecollaborative (Boardman & Hovland, 2022; Fan, 2024; Nami & Asadnia, 2024), digital story telling (Fan, 2024; Nami & Asadnia, 2024; Nishioka, 2016) — as a tool to interact with the development of the knowledge being pursued as learners engaged each other synchronously and asynchronously. Similarly, when learners were instructed to collaboratively work on a group assignment, they relied reciprocally on each other (Angeles Mestre-Segarra & Ruiz-Garrido, 2022; Avci & Adiguzel, 2017; Huang, 2021; Owens & Hite, 2022). When two individuals changed their language in search of compliance to cooperate and avoid misunderstanding in case of a breakdown, meaning negotiation occurred when there was repetition of the broken-down meaning, correction, or asking for clarification.

The second most often cited concept was the underlying sociocultural theory, which focused on social and cultural activities and significance of semantic features rather than the formal features of language (Angeles Mestre-Segarra & Ruiz-Garrido, 2022; Chu et al., 2017; Dugartsyrenova & Sardegna, 2019; Kato et al., 2023; Konieczny & Eckert, 2022; Mohamadi, 2018; Nishioka, 2016; Wu et al., 2022; Yao, 2022; Yeh & Fu, 2023). Some of the constructs under the sociocultural view included supporting technology-enhanced project-based language learning activities, such as collaborative online learning, collaborative project-based learning, digital video creation, virtual exchange project, and scaffolding. In collaborative learning, scaffolding is employed to allow high achievers to guide low achievers in completing complex tasks as a team. This scaffolding occurs in inclusive classrooms: the student with disabilities (SWDs) have the opportunity to feel creative, expand their ideas to global audiences, and increase their literacy skills by collaborating with their peers which is student without disabilities (SWODs) (Boardman & Hovland, 2022).

The review also showcases three concepts related to language learning: incidental vocabulary learning, communicative language learning, and self-determination theory. The first construct is about incidental vocabulary learning, which implies that learners acquire vocabulary without any prior plan. As Nami & Asadnia (2024) found in her research on digital story telling (DST). She asserts that DST may promote incidental vocabulary acquisition when learners search for or create multimedia resources to illustrate the practical applications of the learned vocabulary or when the word under focus is used in peer-made stories. The second is communicative language learning, which Avci & Adiguzel (2017) involves the concept of authentic material using WhatsApp messenger and has been proven to enhance communicative skills and vocabulary knowledge. The third is self-determination theory, which implies a boost of motivation and self-efficacy from engagement in physical activity, one of which is project-based language learning. Supporting this claim, Chan (2022) proved that the use of virtual reality could positively boost students’ motivation. Overall, most research on TEPBLL has a solid theoretical foundation, and future implications for TEPBLL could combine two or more conceptual frameworks to promote novelty.

Types of projects and effectiveness of TEPBLL

Theoretically, a strong PBL course is characterized by a cycle of process and product focus, at least partially defined by students, spanning a certain duration that is not limited to a particular class. It also promotes the natural integration of skills: technology and communication skills, are expected to have a dual responsibility of language and content acquisition, ask students to work in groups and also individually, expect students to take some degree of their own learning responsibility through gathering, analyzing, and disseminating of information from target language resources, leading to teachers and students acquiring new roles and responsibilities, delivering a concrete final outcome to a wider populace, and end with the students’ comments on the process and the outcome (Dressler et al., 2020).

The 31 coded articles had identified seven big umbrellas of project-based language learning type, details exposed in Table 4. Firstly, the total of eight papers applied telecollaborative project. Through this type of project, students could use typical technologies such as Canvas Website, Wikipedia, e-writingforum, Voxopop, Wimba Voice, Talkshoe, Padlet, Wechat. All these technologies were employed to support project-based language learning using the Canvas website to trigger communication in STEM (Owens & Hite, 2022), Wikipedia to boost motivation (Chu et al., 2017) and teching liberal arts (Konieczny & Eckert, 2022), integration of Voxopop, Wimba Voice, Talkshoe (Dugartsyrenova & Sardegna, 2019) and WeChat (Wu et al., 2022) to enhance intercultural awareness, collaboration between Facebook, Youtube, Padlet and Google classroom to promote ecological perspective (Hsieh et al., 2022), e-writingforum to support collaborative learning (Mohamadi, 2018), and Industrial Tech to gain engagement during the consultancy project (Belwal et al., 2021).

Second, three studies applied the digital story telling project (DST). Boardman & Hovland (2022) could engage student with disabilities through DST using the notion of scaffold learning with their SWOD peers. He consented to the literacy skills and found that SWD could expand their ideas and express their creativity through collaboration with their peers. Further, Nami & Asadnia (2024) adopting the multimodalities to create DST, she combines animated DS, Game-based DS, Social media DS, Synchronous collaborative DS and Micro DS to enhance incidental and intentional vocabulary learning. Fan (2024) asserted that DST can facilitate content knowledge, language proficiency and academic competence. In the context of medical-related majors, Fan explored DST to encourage students to develop content related to their context, composing a written text, making an oral script, and doing a voice over to their video presentation. The final result showed that students were more aware of rhetorical, linguistic and inter-semiotic choices.

Third, six studies focused on a virtual reality project employing Spherical video-based virtual reality (SVVR), Immersive virtual reality (iVR), Virtual Interpreting Practice (VIP) app, Assemblr (AR), Virtual Business Professional (VBP), Google Tour Creator. Spherical video-based virtual reality (SVVR) allows students to co-create content for travel books. Students possibly choose content and create a layout for their written work and then uploaded to YouTube, this kind of activity is empirically foster creativity and curiosity (Sun Joo & Lee Jin, 2024). Similarly, Immersive virtual reality (iVR) was used to enhance students’ oral English skills and engagement. Shi et al. (2024) employed iVR to create VR videos by inputting the dialogue script, building the dialogue setting, sharing it through the VR platform, practicing and recording the dialogue into the VR system. Another study on VR involved Virtual Interpreting Practice (VIP) application to foster interpreting skills. Another system called Assemblr (AR) to design a three-fold pamphlet QR code contains 3D interactive content of university tours for freshmen. Lin & Wang (2023) indicated the effect of using AR was on learner’s perception of creativity and boosted their motivation towards learn with technology. Thereupon, Virtual Business Professional (VBP) was employed in the study of Angeles Mestre-Segarra & Ruiz-Garrido (2022) and empirically promoted language-content communication and fostered intercultural awareness through collaborative online international learning. The last system under review is Google Tour Creator. Lin & Wang (2021) assigned participants to create virtual tours platform to introduce their hometown to an international student. This study confirmed that the VR project could facilitate students’ efficacy in creative thinking, and that technical skills also benefit their English communication skills.

Fourth, the gaining attention in TEPBLL area is conducting video-making project. Five studies employed TEPBLL with the aid of Google Docs, EverCam, PowerDirector, Movie Maker, YouTube, and Web 2.0 platform to their project. The collaboration between Movie Maker and Google Docs empirically enhanced students’ communicative performance by creating public service announcement (PSA) videos (Greenblatt & McDonald, 2022). Nishioka (2016) conducted research on collaborative DST using a Web 2.0 based application. The results showed that learners strategically used their first language, grammatical terminology, and private speech in the collaborative knowledge construction process during the project. To promote intra-cultural understanding, Yeh & Fu (2023) research has been conducted on video creation using Power Director which implies the improvement of English communication and deepens cultural understanding.

Fifth, three studies on mobile instant messaging-based projects employed online discussion forum, WeChat, and Whatsapp platforms. The study of Nami & Asadnia (2024) used a multimodal platform of Whatsapp, slideshare, blogpage, inshot and Instagram to implement word contextualization, and story presentation through a learner-generated digital story telling (DST) project. The results indicated that DST design, development, presentation, and evaluation positively enhanced learners’ perceptions towards DST-based vocabulary learning. Avci & Adiguzel (2017) further researched the use of Whatsapp to foster communication skills and found that mobile instant messaging had a positive effect on student performance. Yao (2022) conducted research on climate education using online discussion forums, which increased learners’ willingness to combat climate change. Sixth, the studies focus on the Video Conferencing project with the aid of Machinima (Dooly & Sadler, 2016) and Skype (Kato et al., 2023) platform, focusing on speaking skills. The last is an Audio-visual Translation project employs SubESPSKills and Moodle. Javier Avila-Cabrera & Corral Esteban (2021) proposed SubESPSKills innovative project on subtitling tasks in an English for Specific Purposes class to improve written production skills. The results indicated improvements in writing production skills and some language knowledge (e.g., words, structure, etc.). Furthermore, the language skill and knowledge along with student and teacher activities of TEPBLL also portrayed in Table 5.

Overall, from the above results, it can be seen that the learners had an overall positive attitude towards TEPBLL and their learning outcomes were also satisfactory. The review results in the same nuance support Dressler et al. (2020) and Casal & Bikowski (2020) findings about the benefit of project-based language learning using technology that improves language skills (speaking, listening, writing, reading, vocabulary acquisition), increase intercultural awareness, and triggers creative and critical thinking.

Implications of TEPBLL

Based on the analysis the 31 articles, we classified and briefly summarized the articles from three dimensions: language acquisition, teacher’s roles, and potential research on TEPBLL. In the language acquisition dimension, the previously mentioned literature showed that task design and students’ technological pedagogical content knowledge had great impacts on TEPBLL. Teachers and coordinators in the language program perceived that the content being taught has implications for student motivation in learning language (Nanni, 2021), higher levels of motivation and acquisition of relevant skills (Konieczny & Eckert, 2022), and expanding learning experiences and effectiveness, making learning a joyful and pervasive process, improving learners’ autonomy, and critical thinking, and increasing their motivation and self-confidence (Chan, 2022).

In the teacher roles dimension, the literature indicates that teachers are urged to inaugurate TEPBLL activities by describing technological knowledge and learning objectives to students. As for teacher facilitation, it is also recommended that the teacher should fully understand their students’ perception of language proficiency to set up content and language-related objectives (Sun Joo & Lee Jin, 2024) the same nuance asserted by Jao et al. (2023) that the digital story-telling has its level, so that the teacher should assign the project by their level of language proficiency. Another recommendation is that teachers present practical tutorials and provide fruitful tips for the project. Moreover, teachers should assign specific roles and responsibilities to each group member to ensure everyone participates (Huang, 2021), the teacher sets up staged project tasks and provides progressive feedback, since real-time corrective feedback sustains learner motivation.

Additionally, this review asserts five potential topics for further exploration of future research: (1) the exploration of potential technology used for TEPBLL that suites inclusive classrooms (Boardman & Hovland, 2022); (2) possible influences of students’ emotional states on their project performance (Shi et al., 2024); (3) facilitating content knowledge and language proficiency using robots (Fan, 2024); (4) explore the challenges and limitations faced by students in the process of collaborative video-making to refine the process (Yeh et al., 2020); and (5) a higher number of students may help to generalize the results (Mohamadi, 2018).