Smart Campus Architecture of a Teaching-Based University: A Systematic Literature Review and Design

Abstract

Teaching remains the core business of most universities and is increasingly delivered through smart campus environments embedding the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), cloud and edge computing, and blockchain. A teaching-based university is one whose mission and resources are dominated by teaching rather than research, so how teaching is supported within a smart campus is of central importance. Yet the literature neither defines the teaching function within a smart campus systematically nor provides a dedicated architecture for it; technologies and platforms are reported in isolation. This study conducts a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of 36 peer-reviewed studies (2021–2025) retrieved from Scopus and screened with the PRISMA protocol, then uses the synthesised evidence to design a solution concept. The review answers five research questions on how the smart campus and the teaching-based university are defined, the sub-functions of the teaching stream, the technologies applied and their purposes, the applications and hardware/software components required, and the reference architecture synthesising these findings. It finds that the teaching stream comprises five sub-functions (content delivery, smart-classroom management, personalisation and recommendation, learning analytics and behaviour monitoring, and assessment and credentialing); that AI, IoT, and cloud/edge computing are the dominant enablers while blockchain secures assessment and credentialing; and that a recurring four-layer pattern underpins most proposals. On this basis we propose a four-domain enterprise-architecture blueprint, aligned with the TOGAF Architecture Development Method, for a teaching-based university smart campus—a structured, evidence-grounded reference for institutions whose primary mission is teaching.