Abstract

Digital and experiential project-based learning (PBL) has become a prominent response to the demand for authentic, technology-mediated STEM instruction, yet existing bibliometric mappings of this literature have been confined to a single database, a single educational level or a window shorter than a decade. This study reports a scientometric analysis of the field for 2015-2024. A five-facet Boolean query was executed in Scopus and the Web of Science Core Collection in April 2025. After removal of ineligible document types (n = 230) and cross-database duplicates (n = 666), 2,103 records were analysed in ScientoPy 2.1.3 using total output, average growth rate (AGR), average documents per year (ADY) and percentage of documents published in the last years (PDLY). Journal articles (n = 930) and conference papers (n = 757) dominated; review articles, although few (n = 68), showed the highest recency (PDLY = 25.0%), signalling a field entering consolidation. Author keywords concentrated on “project-based learning” (n = 307), “experiential learning” (n = 221) and “virtual reality” (n = 129), while “online learning” declined (AGR = −2), consistent with terminological migration. The United States led absolute output (n = 594), but Indonesia (PDLY = 44.8%) and India (PDLY = 30.3%) accelerated most steeply. Individual and institutional productivity was flat and unconcentrated: no author exceeded eight documents and no institution exceeded nine. The study contributes the first decade-scale, two-database performance and thematic map of digital PBL in STEM education and identifies assessment methodology, artificial-intelligence integration and cross-system comparative work as principal research fronts.

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