Hirsh, in her paper titled Benefits and challenges of learning technologies for educational assessment – an overview of 21st century top cited research reviews, presents and discusses tentative results from one an overviews in the project “21st century research on educational assessment – key issues, main messages and omissions”. 300 top-rated 21st century research reviews where assessment of/for students in any part of the formal education system is a central aspect, were included and analyzed in the overview. Among these, as many as 80 reviews address benefits and challenges in the use of modern technologies for learning and assessment as a main theme. Dominating topics as well as theoretical and methodological approaches taken in these 80 reviews are presented, the most important results and main messages are discussed, and issues concerning topics and contexts that are omitted or receive less attention are problematized. Hirsh deliberates on her findings emerging from an ongoing research project, where the methodology SMART/Systematic Mapping and Analysis of Research Topographies is implemented for the purpose of producing overviews on various aspects of teaching. While the most common approach in such overviews is to use specific questions as the point of departure and then systematically gather research which has a bearing on the question asked, the point of departure in the current project is instead to analyze research which has had marked impact on a research field and to ask the question How can research about X be characterized, with respect to, for instance, which topics and theoretical and methodological approaches that dominate (second-order) research about X, what the most important results and main messages are, and which issues and/or contexts that are omitted or receive less attention. A starting point in the project is that it is fruitful to map and analyze the research that the research community itself considers important, wherefore only recognized, high-impact and top-cited research reviews listed in the Web of Science (WoS) are included. The rationale behind choosing these reviews is that their high impact testifies to their importance to the research field. It is assumed, moreover, that since they are important and influential, there is a high probability that they will be successful in identifying challenges in the field and possibly also in presenting ideas on how such challenges can be met in future research as well as in practice.

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