Language matters in shaping perceptions and guiding behaviour. The term stakeholder is widely used, yet little attention is paid to the possibility that its use may inadvertently perpetuate colonial narratives and reinforce systemic inequities. In this article, we critically examine the limitations of the stakeholder concept and its ambiguity, normativity, and exclusionary implications. We emphasise the importance of using language that gives a voice to marginalised groups, promotes inclusion and equity, and fosters meaningful and reflexive participation in decision-making processes. In critiquing the use of the term and calling for alternative practices, we aim to contribute to the decolonisation of research norms and the creation of more inclusive and equitable societies. Therefore, rather than advocating a single alternative term, we suggest a focus on the people, places, and species affected by decisions, interventions, projects, and issues.

Smart learning environments (SLEs) utilize a range of digital technologies in supporting learning, education and training; they also provide a prominent signpost for how future learning environments might be shaped. Thus, while innovation proceeds, SLEs are receiving growing attention from the research community, outputs from which are discussed in this paper. Likewise, this broad application of educational digital technologies is also the remit of standardization in an ISO committee, also discussed in this paper. These two communities share a common interest in, conceptualizing this emerging domain with the aim to identifying direction to further development. In doing so, terminology issues arise along with key questions such as, ‘how is smart learning different from traditional learning?’ Presenting a bigger challenge is the question, ‘how can standardization work be best scoped in today's innovation-rich, networked, cloud-based and data-driven learning environments?’ In responding, this conceptual paper seeks to identify candidate constructs and approaches that might lead to stable, coherent and exhaustive understanding of smart learning environments, thereby providing standards development for learning, education and training a needed direction. Based on reviews of pioneering work within smart learning, smart education and smart learning environments we highlight two models, a cognitive smart learning model and a smartness level model. These models are evaluated against current standardization challenges in the field of learning, education and training to form the basis for a development platform for new standards in this area.

This paper presents and analyses solutions where open education and open science were utilised to reduce the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education. The COVID-19 outbreak and associated lockdowns created huge challenges in school and higher education, demanding sudden responses which aimed to sustain pedagogical quality. Responses have varied from conservative to radically innovative. Universally, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted and shocked societies worldwide, and education systems were on the front line. The lockdowns largely stopped face-to-face and formal education in almost all countries, and in most cases, distance learning soon became the ‘new normal’. A central challenge concerned sustaining educational visions and ideals in such circumstances. To better understand the state of the art in the educational landscape, we collected case studies from 13 countries during the first year of the pandemic starting on 11 March 2020 (when the World Health Organization declared a pandemic). This paper presents summaries of the full country reports that were collected and describe lessons learned. Our overall aim was to identify good practices and recommendations from the collected case studies that can be taken forward in the future. We categorised the responses on the three generic educational levels (macro, meso and micro) and identified seven key aspects and trends that are valid for all or most countries: (1) formal education at a distance for first time; (2) similar approaches for formal education; (3) missing infrastructure and sharing open educational resources; (4) diverse teaching and learning methods and practices; (5) open education and access to open educational resources; (6) urgent need for professional development and training for teachers and (7) assessing and monitoring learning environments, teachers and students. Finally, we identified key recommendations on how open education and open science can benefit formal education in schools and universities in the future, namely, improved awareness of open educational practices, provision of ICT infrastructure, embracing and sustaining the practice of open access publications and OERs, capacity building for stakeholders and finally encouraging research and development in the area of open education and open science. We found significant evidence for the proposition that open education and open science can support both traditional face-to-face and distance learning.

Due to COVID-19, universities with limited expertise with the digital environment had to rapidly transition to online teaching and assessment. This transition did not create a new problem but has offered more opportunities for contract cheating and diversified the types of such services. While universities and lecturers were adjusting to the new teaching styles and developing new assessment methods, opportunistic contract cheating providers have been offering $50 COVID-19 discounts and students securing the services of commercial online tutors to take their online exams or to take advantage of real-time assistance from ‘pros’ while sitting examinations. The article contributes to the discourse on contract cheating by reporting on an investigation of the scope and scale of the growing problems related to academic integrity exacerbated by an urgent transition to online assessments during the COVID-19 pandemic. The dark reality is the illegal services are developing at a faster pace than the systems required to curb them, as demonstrated by the results. The all-penetrating issues indicate systemic failures on a global scale that cannot be addressed by an individual academic or university acting alone. Multi-level solutions including academics, universities and the global community are essential. Future research must focus on developing a model of collaboration to address this problem on several levels, taking into account (1) individual academics, (2) universities, (3) countries and (4) international communities.

Worldwide, information technology now plays a substantial role in the daily life of most people, whether in the developed world or in developing countries, such as Indonesia. In this fourth most populated country in the world, information technology is widely used for everyday communications and entertainment purposes, as well as for supporting education. Using a survey of 496 students enrolled in a university in Jakarta, this paper reports on a study aimed at assessing the experiences of young Indonesian students undertaking online learning and the potential of this platform for English learning. The findings show that online activities, skills, and perceived usefulness were positively correlated with positive experiences of learning English online. In particular, the perceived usefulness of the Internet and the ability to use different functions of digital devices and applications had a stronger correlation with increased benefits of online English learning. The study generates implications for Indonesian education suggesting a review of the roles of English instructors in promoting English learning through technology, improvement in English instructors’ skills in utilizing technology in their teaching, and support of relevant stakeholders as well as the preparation of English teacher preparation programme to support pre-service teachers for teaching with technology.