Asian education is known for its examination-driven orientation, with the downsides of distorting the processes of learning and teaching, diminishing students' interest in learning, and failing to nurture twenty-first century competencies among students. As a group of Asian researchers, we have been developing Interest-Driven Creator (IDC) Theory, a design theory based on three anchored concepts, namely interest, creation, and habit. Each of these anchored concepts is represented by a loop composed of three components. In the interest loop, the three components are triggering, immersing, and extending. The components of the creation loop are imitating, combining, and staging. The habit loop consists of cuing environment, routine, and harmony. These three loops are interconnected in various ways, with their characteristics revealed by the design process. We hypothesize that technologysupported learning activities that are designed with reference to IDC Theory will enable students to develop interest in learning, be immersed in the creation process, and, by repeating this process in their daily routines, strengthen habits of creation. Furthermore, students will excel in learning performance, develop twenty-first century competencies, and become lifelong interest-driven creators. To sharpen our understanding and further the development of the theory, we need more discussion and collaborative efforts in the community. Hypotheses arising from this theory can be tested, revised, or refined by setting up and investigating IDC Theory-based experimental sites. By disseminating the framework, foundations, and practices to the various countries and regions of Asia, we hope that it will bring about compelling examples and hence a form of quality education for the twenty-first century, which is an alternative to the examination-driven education system. In this paper, we present an overall introduction to IDC Theory and its history, and discuss some of the steps for advancing it in the future.

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.

Interest-driven creator (IDC) theory is a design theory that intends to inform the design of future education in Asia. It consists of three anchored concepts, namely, interest, creation, and habit. This paper presents the third anchored concept habit as well as the habit loop. IDC theory assumes that learners, when driven by interest, can be engaged in knowledge creation. Furthermore, by repeating such process in their daily learning routines, learners will form interest-driven creation habits. The habit loop, the process of building such a habit, consists of three component concepts—cuing environment, routine, and harmony. The cuing environment is a habit trigger that tells the students’ brain to get prepared and go into an automatic mode, letting a learning behavior unfold. Routine refers to the behavioral patterns the students repeat most often, literally etched into their neural pathways. Harmony refers to the affective outcome of the routine activity as well as the integration or stabilization of habits; that is, through the routine behavior and action, students may feel that their needs get fulfilled, feel satisfied, and experience inner peace. It is our hope that such habitual behavior of creating knowledge can be sustained so long that students ultimately become lifelong interest-driven creators. This paper focuses on the description of the three components of the habit loop and discusses how these components are related to the interest loop and the creation loop in supporting learners in developing their interest-driven creation capability.

The interest-driven creator (IDC) theory is being developed as a group endeavor by Asian researchers to articulate a holistic learning design theory for future education in Asia. The theory hypothesizes that students, driven by interest, can be engaged in the creation of knowledge (generating ideas and artifacts). By repeating this creation process in their daily learning routines, they will excel in learning performance, develop twenty-first-century competencies, and form creation habits. We hope that with such practices in education, our future generations will ultimately become lifelong interestdriven creators. In IDC Theory, there are three anchored concepts, namely, interest, creation, and habit. Each anchored concept comprises three component concepts which form a concept loop. For example, the creation loop consists of three component concepts-imitating, combining, and staging. Imitating is concerned with taking in (or inputting) an abundant amount of existing knowledge from the outside world to form one's background knowledge. Combining refers to delivering (or outputting) new ideas or artifacts prolifically by synthesizing existing information encountered in the world and thoughts arising from the students' background knowledge. Staging relates to frequently demonstrating the generated ideas or artifacts to the relevant communities and receiving feedback from these communities to improve the novelty and value of the demonstrated outcomes while gaining social recognition and nurturing positive social emotions. This paper focuses on describing the three components of the creation loop. We provide three case studies to illustrate the creation loop at work, as well as how it intertwines with both the interest and habit loops in supporting students to develop their creation capabilities. In presenting this iteration of the creation concept, an anchored concept in IDC theory, we acknowledge the roles played of imitation, combination, and staging in different learning and education contexts-indeed, there are multiple theories that inform and intersect with it.

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.